Tales of Another Broken Heart
by Raventhedarkgoddess
Summary: Completed collection of oneshot songfics, Couples being RaeCy, RaeRob, RobStar, and BBT. Mostly angsty style plots. If you choose to read, review.
1. NOTE: PLEASE READ

Okay, I can get in trouble for doing this, making an author's note without a story attached, but everything is in it's original context and I'm too lazy to add this note to the first chapter. Okay, the couplings you will find in these stories vary, and most of them ((I think)) have the coupling at the beginning of the fic. Also, for those of you who have read my one-shots before ((There are a LOT of you and I thank you!)) this is just my way of orginizing them. I'll be adding new ones in later chapters, so make sure to stop back. Reviews welcome, as always.

Ja!  
Raventhedarkgoddess

PS: I'm really sorry for anyone's e-mail box whom I swamped with these alerts, but it had to be done.


	2. Anthem of Our Dying Day

Raventhedarkgoddess: Okay, this one is for you, OneOfAKind284. Sorry I didn't start on it sooner. I don't own Teen Titans or Anthem Of Our Dying Day by Story Of The Year (It kinda belongs to THEM.)That said, here's the story.

Chapter One: Our Dying Day

_The stars will cry  
The blackest tears tonight  
And this is the moment that I live for  
I can smell the ocean air  
And here I am  
Pouring my heart onto these rooftops  
Just a ghost to the world  
Exactly what I need._

Cyborg was all alone on the roof, unable to figure out what he was doing there at the late hour of one in the morning. The half-machine gazed out at the city the Teen Titans fought so hard to protect everyday of their lives. He relised what he really wanted to think about and the human half of his face blushed hot with a rosey color even though he was all alone. He wanted to think about the purple-haired, violet-eyed enchantress that lay below the rooftop, asleep. He fixed his eyes on the spot on the roof that was sheltering her as she lay and then shook his head as if to clear it. Get a grip, man, he thought. She can't love you.

As if reading his thoughts, Raven Roth climbed onto the roof, looking for peace and a few minutes away from the stuffiness of the tower and Beast Boy's snoring. Brushing her hair out of her half-closed eyes and sitting down, it took her a few seconds to notice that Cyborg's legs were dangling next to hers and that he was here too. Raven knew she didnt' mind his company. You like it, nagged a voice in her head. She tried to shake that off and gazed skyward. "Lovely night, huh?" Cyborg tried to break the heavy silence engufling them like a blanket over a cold sleeper on a late night.

"Everything is still," Raven said softly. "Cyborg, look at the stars with the lights, the tails...Do they look like they're crying tears to you? Black tears agenst the black sky so that we can't see them? Tears from years of watching humanity? I mean, other things must have emotions too...Maybe they're like me. They can't show them." Raven bit her lip hard. Great, now he thinks I'm crazy, she thought, watching him squint skyward as if trying to see what she saw there. He lowered his head and looked directly into hers, but it was with thought, not scorn.

His metal hand slid itself under her chin, keeping her eyes looking into his. Raven did not, as he had expected her to do, recoil or look away, but kept her head up and did not avert his gaze. "Ya, I see what you mean. I think everything must get upset...Humans aren't and never will be perfect, Ray. I think I'd cry too. Sometimes I would like to cry...But maybe only humans cry." He turned away from her, wanting more than ever to cry. Raven looked at him, wanting to do something to ease his pain. This is the moment you've been living for, she said to herself. So maybe you could tell him that you do love him, but you can't let it beyond the mirror? Don't be an idiot, she told herself. A guy like him could never like a girl like you.  
Cyborg felt invigorated and took a deep breath of the air around them. Raven was standing there, his hand still holding her face up as he took a deep breath of the ocean-like air rolling off the lake that was almost surrounding the tower. Cyborg didn't know what he wanted to say or why he wanted to say it, but he opened his mouth to speak all the same. I may be only half-human, he said to himself, but I've still got a heart and I'm about to pour it out. His human eye stayed on Raven, but the other one wandered over the semi-crumbling rooftop he was about to pour his heart on. He felt like a ghost, almost a tradtior to himself, telling himself that this was the wrong thing to do and that she wouldn't feel the same way back, but he knew he couldn't hold back any longer. This is exactly what I need to know, he told himself, stiffening his resolve and looking at her with both eyes.

_From up here the city lights burn  
Like a thousand miles of fire  
And I'm here to sing this anthem  
Of our dying day  
Of our dying day  
Of our dying day  
Of our dying!_

Raven couldn't resist looking back at him, hoping her calm facade was not betrayed by her beating heart or harsher breathing. Trying to keep the emotions from racing across her eyes was also a challange. You're practiced at this, she told herself. Just listen to what he says, she thought. Dear God, let him like me, she thought to herself. "Raven, I want to know...Am I just a brother to you? And tell me the truth. I mean, are we just like family,or...um..." Cyborg felt the human side of his face growing warm again as he stared at the ground, too ashamed to look at Raven's face again.

Raven sighed, trying not to blush herself. He hasn't given any hint, she thought to herself. But the truth...I've got to tell him the truth. Raven's eyes flickered slightly with the emotions she was trying to control. What the hell is she thinking? A way to let me down? I can't handle that, he thought to himself. "Cyborg...You mean a little more than I think I show you. You mean a lot...I see it behind my mirror and one day I'll show you how much I care. For now, just...Would knowing I love you be enough?" Raven blushed now, head ducked as something below them blew up. Beast Boy, looking up in shock, found out that his window had shattered. Shrugging, he fell back asleep into his dreams of fangirls.

"Raven, that's more than enough." He slid his arm around her shoulders and they sat like that, silent for a while. "Everything...Looks like it's burning." Raven looked over the city. "I know it's just the lights, but still, how many miles can there be?" She leaned agenst him, unsure why she felt so sure that there was fire. Cyborg's eyes widened, but before he could speak, Robin came rushing up. Cyborg quickly pulled his arm away from Raven and the two stood up. Although his best friend raised both eyebrows at him, he let it pass and told them that a bank was on fire and a new villan, a young girl called Pyroa, was robbing most of the city's money. They took off without a word, Cyborg's mind clouded with new thoughts of Raven.

_For a second I wish the tide  
Would swallow every inch of this city  
As you gasp for air tonight  
I'd scream this song right in your faceIf you were here  
I swear I wont miss a beat  
Cause I never  
Never have before_

Cyborg dodged the fire and aimed off to his right to protect Raven from the fire-slinging teen that appered determined to pick off the entire team and get away before everything was over. Her firey red hair blended with the background of fire and chaos she had created as she slung fireballs at Raven, who seemed to be having mild trouble moving around them due to the flames. Raven moved slightly toward Terra, who screamed as a fireball slammed her in the side. Beast Boy, now an elephant, ran forward to put her out.

Starfire was having just as much trouble. This girl had the strange ability to throw in three directions at once, causing catastophe for both girls as well as Robin. Cyborg, the only one not targeted, saw that Robin was being attacked and moved forward. He hit the girl once in the chest, and Pyroa shreiked and fell to her knees. "You won't take me that easily," she said, aiming for what Cyborg thought to be nothing as she fainted dead away.

"Good work, Cyborg." Robin turned, trying to see what his friend was looking at with such obivous horror. Then he relised that Beast Boy, having hauled Terra off to the side, was trying to get Starfire and Raven to move before the blast that was thought to be at nothing hit them both. Raven shoved the babbling Starfire out of the way, but in the process found herself injured, falling down slightly as she became a charred mass agenst the pavement. Cyborg, forgeting that no one knew about his relationship with Raven and praying she was safe, ran in. The injury was deep, but Raven's face broke into a rare smile as he picked her up and began showing concern. "Are you hurt? Raven, does it hurt to walk?" Still ranting, he set her gently down in the back of the T-car, the others following in the usual style of the air.

Raven clutched his neck without shame, the others watching as he lay her on the couch and bent close to hear her strained voice. She looked up at him and whispered something that made him go pale with worry and obvious denial. "Don't joke like that, Ray. That ain't funny. You know that ain't funny!"

"I'm not joking. I wish I were. Cyborg, I'm as good as dead. Just take me back up onto the roof." Cyborg, still ranting that it wasn't true, picked her up and the pair of them sat there, silently as they had at first. The others, though Terra wanted to make sure she was okay since she felt this was partly her own fault, respected their privacy and let them talk together and alone. Raven gasped for air as he relised the cold, hard truth. Raven, burnt and injured, was dying. He took her in his arms, holding the gasping body in his arms. "I'll always love you, ya know that?" Cyborg found something rare: A single tear rolled down the human side of his face and landed agenst Raven's.

"I never thought I could love. I could. Thank you so much: You've done more than you need know." Raven quit struggling for air, and her pale face became paler still, her breathing barley detectable. Cyborg had already accepted her death, and gazed out over the city, hugging the almost-lifeless girl of his dreams agenst his chest. A light rain began to fall over them both and the lake swelled threateningly. "The lake can swallow the whole damn city. I don't care. I don't care at all anymore. The only thing I could bring my heart to care for is gone. Swallow every inch. Swallow them all!"

Ducking his head toward Raven, he kissed her lips and found them waxy and cold. Her hands, still resting on his neck, were almost the same. Cyborg stared at his own hands and felt his own face. Nothing feels right after tonight, he thought. I mean, all of a sudden I can cry and everything...I just never had a reason to cry. He shook his head as if trying to clear it for the second time that night. I've got to calm down. She's gone, but I can't just keep missing beats. I've never missed one before, I can't miss one now. I'd tell her that too, if only she were here...Cyborg closed his eyes and allowed his mind to fade a bit, away from the pain.

_From up here the city lights burn  
Like a thousand miles of fire  
And I'm here to sing this anthem  
Of our dying day  
Of our dying day  
Of our dying day  
Of our dying!  
_  
When he came back to his senses, Cyborg looked over at Raven and then out over the city, up into the few stars that were still visible through the drizzle. He remembered what she'd said about the crying stars and the burning city lights and glanced out again. Fire, he thought, they still look like fire to me. This is her dying day, he thought softly. I'd love to say something, anything...

"I'm not completely gone, you know." Cyborg looked into the eyes of the girl. "It's not my dying day yet." She coughed gently, almost lightly. "Come on, let me lay down."

Raven lay in her bed soundlessly, finally calling Cyborg in to tell him that she was done now. "I tried." She kissed him and he knew she was gone. Raven fell agenst his side, completely lifeless, and Cyborg relised she had left her radio on. "And I'm here to sing this anthem of our dying day..." Cyborg sighed. He had already accepted this once, and, although he expected her to spring up, he gave into the greif. Robin came in and set his hand agenst Cyborg's shoulder, and Cyborg nodded sadly.

Weeks later, Cyborg placed the same song on in his car. He and Robin stood and Cyborg knelt down in front of her grave, placing flowers on two graves that were close. As Robin climbed into the car to give him a moment, Cyborg thought he heard two voices. Looking over at his mother and Raven's graves, Cyborg heard the words 'We are happy, you shall follow when you are ready.' He knew that both of them wanted him to live long and happy, and he nodded. It may be Ray's dying day, he thought, but she doesn't want it to be mine.

Raventhedarkgoddess: There we go. Short little songfic one shot. I hope you liked it.


	3. Because of You

Raventhedarkgoddess: (Rob/Star)I don't own Teen Titans and was in the mood to do a death romance fic, and this just kinda popped up in my notebook. Go figure. I'm just gonna post it anyway.

Because of You

_Hands on the mirror,  
Can't get much clearer,  
Can't make this all go away.  
Now that you're bleeding  
You stare at the ceiling,  
And watch as it all fades away.  
_  
Robin looked miserably into the small single-hung mirror in the intensive care waiting room of the Jump City hospital. Ignoring the few other stragglers and the disapproving nurses and doctors that stared at him, he slammed both hands against the mirror, which vaguely shook without breaking. He sighed and ran one of the same hands miserably through his already-messy black hair, trying to avoid looking into the while orbs of his own eyes. _The less I see the less I_ _think_, he thought quietly to himself.

For some reason, this thought just frustrated him even further and he slammed the mirror again, trying his hardest to shatter it once and for all. When the mirror still resisted the force of his half-crazed anger, he began to pace back and forth again and again, wishing he hadn't chased Cyborg and the others away. He didn't do anything wrong, but Robin had chased them away. And for what, he thought, they were only trying to get you through this without losing your mind...

He caught sight of himself in the mirror. His face was tear-streaked and wild-looking, the entire form tight. Robin sank down again, unable to continue pacing. _Pull yourself together_, hissed the part of him that was still Robin and not the new, worried, scared boy he knew he was becoming. _You can't make it go away, so why don't_ _you just sort it out?_ Robin could not answer his own demanding questions. _How did it all happen?_ He countered with questions of his own. _And why? Was it really only a few hours ago?_ Slowly Robin's mind turned to what he didn't want to think about: The battle a few hours ago that had left him sitting here all alone.

**_A few hours ago..._**

Jump City's resident teenagers were sitting around fulfilling their usual activities: Raven had her head buried in a book, Starfire was attempting to talk to Robin, Robin was ignoring her for Beast Boy and Cyborg's video game, and Terra was sitting on the edge of the couch, not talking. Raven looked first at Robin, then at Starfire, then proceeded to glare at Robin over the top of her book. _What's her deal?_ Robin thought, not realizing that Raven was also giving Starfire mildly sympathetic looks.

Raven suddenly unplugged the Gamestation, much to the protests of Cyborg, Beast Boy, and a startled Robin. "I said, attack on the city by Slade. Pay a little more attention and the whole city will go up in smoke," she added with a hiss. The whole team, subject to Raven's angry words and trying to prove that they were listening to her, followed her lead immediately.

"What's your plan, Slade?" Robin yelled ten minutes later, his eyes trained on Slade. Slade laughed coldly and looked at the assembled team, not bothering to answer Robin right away.

"You'll be in the same situation you were last time very soon," he said. "Only you'll have no friends to rejoin with. Prepare to perish," Slade said with what might have been vague glee behind his words as he stared at Robin almost as if he had just claimed a fantastic prize. Hundreds of the Slade-bots they'd fought before surrounded them. "We'll see, Slade," he hissed under his breath. "Titans, go," he yelled in his usual leader-like voice.

Robin moved in close to Slade, preparing for the usual yelling, fighting torrent between himself and the man he hated so much. Slade's combat appeared almost light and half-hearted, although he did keep wacking Robin's face with a wicked grin. Robin groaned as a bit of his own blood tricked into his mouth. He attempted to stand up but found that something else, a blast of green energy, flew at Slade. Slade leaned over to knock whatever had hit him and it hit the wall with a sickening splat. Suddenly Slade stepped back, evading the now -standing Robin's next blow, and began to retreat.

Robin's eyes get wide with mild confusion._Why would he just back off?_ Robin thought. Suddenly, Raven let out a low moan of horror and disgust like the Titans had never heard from her before. Robin ran up at her side in time to see her use her powers to pick up what he at first thought to be a Slade-bot, until he realized that every time she stepped she recoiled from the red waves of blood oozing from the amber-head figure she held far away from herself.  
Robin knew at once who it was. There was no mistaking the hair or the way Raven looked upward, spell-bound as she flew in the direction of the hospital. That figure was Starfire.

**_Currently..._**

Robin sighed. He had no clue who to blame, wether to blame himself or Starfire. _It was her own fault she tried to help you_, he thought bitterly, then regretted it. _And you would have done the same thing for her_, he reminded himself quietly. "I'm sorry to bother you," said a quiet female voice. He jerked his head upright, because five seconds ago the room had been empty. A young, white-uniformed nurse with straight red hair and a sad face was looking at him. Her hair reminded him of Starfire and he had to clear his throat once to keep from choking. "The doctor wanted me to find Robin. I believe that's your name?" Her kindly actions almost drove him into tears, so he nodded once and followed her down the hall, the slow clicking of her heels almost like a long-forgotten song to his ears.

The nurse turned the knob on one of the identical doors in the hall. Robin quietly, almost as if hoping to find out this was all a dream, followed her in quietly. A doctor rushed over to Robin. "You're friend is awake, but I'm hoping perhaps you could...talk to her a bit, and get her to respond. I know she's alright, it's just that I can't operate unless I have proof that she still remembers things, and all she's done so far is ignore me. So give it a shot," the doctor said, shoving Robin forward before he could get a word in edgewise.

Robin meekly stepped forward. Never before had he been so uncertain. The girl lying in the bed resembled Starfire, but she defiantly wasn't the same girl that had blasted Slade just a few short hours before. Her eyes, while open, held no more shimmer or gleam and stared blankly at the ceiling. Blood was soaking the bandage around her stomach, where she had apparently been struck.

"Everything is fading," she whispered softly, almost too softly, so that Robin would not have heard her if he had not fallen to his knees at her bedside. She gripped his hand tightly as a new wave of pain riveted over her body. "It's so hard to breathe..."

_You know I can't be there  
each time that you call  
I swore not to come but I'm here after all.  
I know by the look that I see in your eye.I won't stand around and I won't watch you die.  
From what you do, because of you._

Robin allowed her to hold onto his hand, glad she was talking to him. _I wish she'd never let go_, he thought softly. _She's called me_ to d_every time I can imagine, and I'm still here after all. What am I going_ _to do when she doesn't need me anymore?_ Struck by this new thought, Robin looked over at the girl laying in the bed. She was looking at him with some of her old spark and hope. _She's going to live,_ he told himself forcefully. _You know it_, he added, trying to firm his weak beliefs. "It's okay, Star," he said, trying to ignore the negative readings doctors were yelling to each other off various screens.

Starfire's face said it all. She didn't believe that anymore than he did, but she tried to hide it. Robin appreciated it, but even as his mind denied it, his heart knew it was over.

_From what you do-  
Now that you did this  
You ask for forgiveness,  
Doctor could you be my priest?  
You say you're mistaken,  
But look what you've taken,  
You laugh as you lie through your teeth.  
From what you do, because of you._

"Robin, the fault of all this is mine alone. If I had not attacked Slade, I would still be able to carry on in this world. Unless the doctor is a priest, one of God's men, I am doomed. I wish I were not leaving you alone, though. I did not think of this before and wish I would have. Love has made us both half-crazy. Forgive me," she added, her voice losing strength again.

"Starfire," Robin began, trying to force believe into both of them, "I need you like you need me. In fact, we both need each other. And you aren't dying, so just calm down." Both arms slid around her form. She's really thin, Robin thought for the first time, hit by how small and fragile she felt in his arms. She lay her head back on one of his hands as silence heavily blanketed the room around the pair of them, too wrapped up in each other to notice anything else.

_You know I can't be there  
each time that you call  
I swore not to come but I'm here after all.  
I know by the look that I see in your eye.  
I won't stand around and I won't watch you die.  
From what you do, because of you._

The doctor came over to the quiet couple, who's arms were still around each other. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave for a time. Starfire has many more tests we must do in order to ready her for possible surgery." Robin followed the same pretty nurse that had reminded him of Starfire down the long hall and back to the waiting room. Sinking down into the chair, feeling reassured that Starfire would get better, Robin dosed off, falling into dreams of the girl he loved so much as he had always known her.

"Robin! Robin!" Someone had pressed the palms of their hands against his shoulder and was shaking him, obviously a girl by the nails that dug into his shoulder. Robin opened one eye open slightly, trying to figure out who was shaking him and yelling at him so loudly. "Robin, they want us in Starfire's room right away." Robin sat up straight, opening both eyes, because the swirling blue cloak in front of him belonged to Raven. He hardly recognized her voice without it's normal hard edge, because now it was laced with a different tone: Sheer, cold panic.

_Hands on the mirror,  
Can't get much clearer.  
Can't make this all go away.  
Now that you're bleeding  
You stare at the ceiling  
And watch as it all fades away.  
From what you do, because of you.  
You know I can't be there,  
Each time that you call,  
I swore not to come but I'm here after all.  
I know by the look that I see in your eye.  
I won't stand around and I won't watch you die.  
From what you do, because of you.  
_  
Cyborg moved back from the bed as Robin and Raven entered. Raven went straight over to Cyborg and collapsed against his chest, neither of them trying to hide how they were feeling in the mist of the chaos. Robin stepped up to the bed. "Things have changed," the doctor whispered to Robin. "I'm afraid your friend does not have much more time among the living. Please say anything that has remained unsaid now." His eyes were full of sincerity and loss, as if Starfire had been one of his friends too.

Robin allowed the doctor's words to bounce off himself, not really listening to him as he moved up to Starfire. One arm, covered in IV's, stretched toward him and met his hair. "Robin, please, I just wish to say that I love you and I am no longer afraid." He slipped both arms around her, trying to ignore what she was saying. "Hold me as I die," she whispered.

"You're not dying!" Robin's voice was loud and insistent now. "You're my friend! I love you! You're far from dying at all!" He wheeled around wildly to face the other three, who leaned on the wall. "Is this a sick joke? Cause I'm not laughing at all!"

Beast Boy opened his mouth to say something back, but Cyborg jabbed him with the arm not supporting Raven and Raven muttered something about denial being only natural in the grieving processes of a human being. "I won't watch this. Even if it is a fake, I won't stand here and watch her die!" Robin ran from the room, down the long hall, and into the parking lot, slinging his body onto the motorcycle and riding off into the pouring rain. Around that same moment, with Starfire clutching onto Raven, she took in her last breath.

Four days later, Robin was found with a note next to him. _Bury_ _me with Starfire. What she did and will always do has caused me to be_ _with her forever. We'll always watch over you._ He had signed it with the words, _Love forever_. Cyborg and Raven watched as the coffin was lowered into the earth, Beast Boy standing behind the couple with a look of loneliness. The Teen Titans were united no more, the barrier of life and death now in the way.

Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Titans or the song Because of You by Nickleback


	4. Fall to Peices

**Fall To Peices**

_The one is for you, Vandagirl519.  
__Why?  
__For loving Rae/Cy, for reading and  
__reveiwing my stuff, and, most of all,  
__for telling me you love the crap I try to  
__pass as work even if you don't.  
__Thank you.  
__This one's for you. Enjoy, everyone.

* * *

_

_**I looked away.  
**__**Then I looked back at you.  
**__**You tried to say things that you can't undo.  
**__**If I had my way, I'd never get over you.  
**__**Today's the day I pray that we make it through.  
**__**Making it through the fall.  
**__**Making it through it all...**_

_**Raven**_

I looked away from Cyborg. What could I have told him to make a difference anyway? Nothing was the same between us anymore, and I was so close to tears that day that seeing his eyes would have shattered the thin sheild I had errected between me, my emotions, and the world. His soft voice was speaking, telling me something I didn't really want to hear, but, in all truth, I really wasn't listening. I was busy being headstrong, pretending not to hear, pretending I didn't need him. How much more of it could I endure, though, before I was completely broken?

Suddenly, my head snapped up and my ears began to take a special intrest in what he was trying to say to me, even though I wanted no real part of it. His robotic breath was shuddering, cold, if only for a moment, and then he decided to MAKE me look into his eyes, tilting so that his head was at such an angle with my eyes that I HAD to look. It took years of learning to hold my emotions in to prepare me for the painful surge of life and death I felt, the bond, and it was all I could do not to cry, scream at him, and use my powers to hurt everyone and everything that had ever hurt me.

"Raven..." He started, then stopped, his eyes still unnaturally calm, considering all that was going on, but I could see the tears falling from his human eye, and even the robotic one seemed duller than usual. I wanted to drop everything, to hug him, but his comments still rang in my ears, and they kept the love at bay with their blind hate.

_Emotionless goth! Do you ever smile? Do you really care about me? Do you care about anything? Do you even think? Why are you so ignorent, so blind to my love? Raven Roth, have you ever really been loved? Do you even really love me? _The words rang, over and over, and I reconized some of them from another time, another place: I reconized some of them as my father's words, his unearthly voice blending with the angry voice of my angel, my Cyborg.

"Don't 'Raven' me!" I could feel the temper within me rising, the father I was thinking about fighting with me, fighting to surface. The blood was in both temples, everything was set up so perfectly for my fury to just let go. I could show him that I have emotions... Anger being the strongest, combating my love due to his own foolish words...

"Raven, I'm sorry!" He was pleading with me. He loves you. So why do you keep fighting him? The answers weren't in my head, though. Maybe they were never there at all. Either way, I turned from him, feeling him grab onto my cloak, wanting to turn back, but also not wanting him to see who I really was, not wanting to let go of my anger.

"There's nothing that can undo the words you just said to me," I told him, dead-quiet. I knew he couldn't have looked into my eyes now, for something worse then sorrow would have come pouring out, the way blood pours from old wounds long after they 'heal'. His hand tried to grasp me, to touch me, to bring his love back to life: I could not allow for that to happen, so I stepped further away, further toward the stairs up to my room. "And if I have my way, I'll never get over this. I'll never get over you." The tears were so, so close, and I was ready to let them come. The curse of being myself, though, was that I could not allow that.

**Cyborg**

She walked away. Just walked away from me. Her eyes were so red one minute, violet and tear-filled the next. She had changed her mood so fast... I wanted to change what I'd said, take it back. I had just been so furious with her that day... I mean, she said it, but did she show it? No. She just stood there, bairly hugging me back. So I lost my temper and yelled at her. I understand that everything is hard for her... But she could smile once in a while! I know she can, I've seen her.

_And if I have my way, I'll never get over this. I'll never get over you. _That keeps ringing in my head. I mean, I LOVED her. And she just walked upstairs. On the way up to my room, I could hear her crying. I wanted to go in and ask her what was wrong, but then I remembered: It was all my fault.

I remember sitting on my bed this morning, praying that whatever life handed us, we'd be able to take it. And the first oportunity to mess us up, and WHAT do I do? I make her cry and leave her alone. She's probably so totally broken... But why am I thinking about her? This was just a setback, a fall... We'll make it through, I know we will. Just me and Raven. She loves me... I know she loves me. The other alternitive... I can't think about that right now.

_**And I don't want to fall to peices.  
**__**I just want to sit and stare at you.  
**__**And I don't want to talk about it.  
**__**I don't want a conversation.  
**__**I just want to cry in front of you.  
**__**I don't want to talk about it.  
**__**I'm in love with you.**_

**Raven**

Why? Why did I say that? We weren't through. I still love him... I'll always love him. And now I've probably driven him so far away from me... It's all my fault. It'll always be my fault. I wish I wasn't so broken. I wish I had the courage, the strenght, to go knock on his door.

I'll never forget the look in his eyes. I'll never forget staring into his face. I used to stare at him for hours. We never needed words. Words only cut, only sting, only killed us both. In many respects, I'm not dead, but I've died even in my own heart. I'll admit, I was never really the most lively thing in my heart, but at least I used to have a purpose. That purpose was Cyborg. Without him, who am I? I can't talk about this right now. I don't want to talk about it to anyone. Not to myself, not to Cyborg. Not to anyone. I can't talk about it. I don't WANT to talk about it, now or ever.

I'll never be able to talk about it. What is there to say? I loved him, I still do, and my heart is shattered. I'll go about as normal, though. No one needs to know. No one needs to know unless I tell them. And who could I tell? All of them would go running back to Cyborg... They wouldn't understand that I just can't risk having Cyborg around right now. I wouldn't try to heal this wound with words anyway. I can't use words when words did this to us.

I want to cry in front of him. I want to cry long and hard, just to prove I can. I want to see the guilt on his face, want to see him move forward. I want his arms around me, making me love him more than I did before the fight, making me forget all that has happened between us. I want it all taken back... I just want Cyborg back. I want my life back... But most of all, I want the feelings I used to get, the love. Even though I couldn't show it, I could always feel it. Now I need it. Oh, how I need love right now.

**Outveiw**

The days flew between the two silent teens. Both could feel it: The interfaced need for love. It was too great, though, and neither of them would bother to touch upon it. Everyone looked at them sitting on oppisite ends of the couch, keeping their converstaions to a minium. Everyone saw their unwillingness to look at one another. Even Starfire began to get the feeling that something was wrong between her two friends. One night, during combat, everything became just as clear to them.

Cyborg was rushing in, next to Plasmus, ready to attack him. "Raven, go help Cyborg!" Robin yelled in her direction.

Raven stood up, rushing in, more than ready to take Plasmus down, until she noticed Cyborg being attacked. Her own hard words rang around in her head. _And if I have my way, I'll never get over this. I'll never get over you. _She was stopped in midair. She thought about helping Cyborg, but was stopped by her thoughts. No, she told herself. He'll be fine. You can't let him know how much you love him, because then you'll get back together and something worse will happen. Even though she knew this was thinking deluded by her fear of being hurt, she refused to do anything, remaining suspended in midair.

"Raven, help Cyborg!" Robin said in desperation, as he and Starfire prepared to finish the monster off. Beast Boy was trying unsuccessfully to free Cyborg. Raven moved in and freed him, using her mind and trying to avoid the outburst of power that came from touching him in any way. Everyone was astounded when the two of them, both free and standing next to each other, said nothing, and Raven climbed into the back of the car rather than her normal shotgun position.

**Cyborg**

_**You're the only one  
**__**I'd be with till the end.  
**__**When I come undone  
**__**You bring me back again.  
**__**Back under the stars.  
**__**Back into your arms.**_

I really miss her. This is the end of it if I don't get her back. Her laugh, when she actually laughed, was worth more than my life is right now. Her smile was everything. I remember going out, going for walks with her, silent one minute, laughing at some stupid thing I said the next. It's been a few weeks. How long can it take to heal, to move on? Sure wish I could move on.

But I can't. She was the only one who would have me while I'm Cyborg. When I was Victor, the girls were all over me. But then I didn't understand. I didn't know what love was. I don't think I would have known real love if it kicked me in my ass. When I became THIS, all the girls wanted nothing to do with me. When I heard a new girl was coming to the team, I though nothing of it, of her. But then we locked eyes, and slowly we began to lock hands. More and more I could feel her opening up, opening up to loving me. And the day she accepted my question, the croaked question of weather or not she would be with me, I knew something was going on between us.

I remember all those days I'd get mad. I'd put my foot through something. I'd almost murder Beast Boy. The night of, usually, Raven would abandon her room and her meditation to walk with me, outside, her perfect pale hand clinging to mine. We'd talk it over, she'd teach me how to let go of some of my rage, and I'd feel pretty good about myself. We'd hug, she'd give me a kiss... She was beautiful, her azure eyes so close to mine, then closing, one strand of hair across her closed eyes, just missing our touching lips. I doubt she knew I studied her during those kisses. I doubt she knew I saw the most beautiful woman in the world when she clung to me and kept herself to my side. But I did, and she was. And I want those times back.

**Outveiw**

Cyborg passed Raven in the hall, so absorbed in thoughts of what he was about to do that he barely saw her. What he did see was a scowl, both hands on her hips, and a generally ugly look of a person who had just been run into by someone who they thought had no right to run into them. Had she not been so busy scowling, she might have seen the bottle of pills in his hands instead of his closing door.

**Raven**

Cyborg just nearly ran me down in the hall. I think he forgets he's made of metal sometimes... That really hurt... I don't even want to know what he was doing out at midnight... I don't think I want to think.

**Cyborg**

That's it. Easy does it... Just enough pills to make me sick. Or at least the human part of me sick. If I'm sick, Raven will have to worry enough to come to my side. She'll just have to. And then I can apologize. It's up to her to forgive me, but I hope she'll understand: I'm crazy. My love for her is making me crazy.

Is everything suppossed to go black, or is something horribly wr-...

**Outveiw**

Raven was outside Cyborg's door. Breathe, Raven, she told herself, then knocked again, her knuckles hurting worse than ever from the rough metal. When Cyborg continued to be non-responsive, she shoved the door open, unlocking it with her mind. "Cyborg?" Her voice came out timid, although still not out of it's monotonus way of speaking. And then the bare bulb above her blew up, and Raven Roth screamed louder than she'd screamed in years, perhaps in her whole life.

**Raven**

_**Want to know who you are.  
**__**Want to know where to start.  
**__**I want to know what this means.  
**__**Want to know how you feel.  
**__**Want to know what is real.  
**__**I want to know everything.  
**__**Everything...**_

I can't belive it. His grave. It's in front of me. It's been three days since I found him, face-down, in the pillow. I can't belive it. A drug overdose that killed him almost instantly is what the doctors said happened. I didn't think he was that hung up. If only I could have done something. If only I could have let him know I care. If only. If only. I hate those words. I resent every single time I say them, every time I hear Robin say them, every time I even begin to think them.

I always loved him, but did I really know anything? Did I understand his personality, his feelings? Did I understand him? Damn it, why wasn't I more careful? I didn't used to think there would be any end... Now that there is, I don't know where to start. And I can't start from someone's end. I can't even start from my own begining. Was anything ever between us anyway?

This can't be real. I'm too numb to feel, but I know it will come, the emotions and the tears. I don't want to be here when that happens... I don't want to be here at all. I want to go home, and lay down on his bed, and cry. I want to cry forever. This is all my fault...

**Raven fell down onto the grave, her face down in the mud. **I just can't take this anymore... **Everything around her began to blow up, and she knew that, somehow, she was too far gone to help herself up, or to care.**

**Outveiw**

_**I don't want to fall to peices.  
**__**I just want to sit and stare at you.  
**__**And I don't want to talk about it.  
**__**I don't want a conversation.  
**__**I just want to cry in front of you.  
**__**And I don't want to talk about it.  
**__**I'm in love with you.  
**__**I'm in love with you.  
**__**Cause I'm in love with you.  
**__**I'm in love with you.  
**__**I'm in love with you.**_

Starfire stood, clinging to Robin. The year had passed slowly. Robin, Beast Boy, and Starfire stood in the doorway of Jump City's Mental Ward. Raven lay on her bed, the white cloak around her, Cyborg's picture next to her bed. She did not apper to reconize them. "It shall... Always be like this?" Starfire whispered.

Robin could not bring himself to look at Raven, and instead turned to the doctor. She hadn't spoken in the past year, and everyone was worried. Robin could only sigh.

As they left after their hour alloted session, a voice hoarse and devoid of use came up over the silent group. "I love you, and goodbye." It was none other than Raven, whispering to the picture. Beast Boy's tears fell, for it was hopeless. Love had brought them both to an end.


	5. Fighting Home

_Raventhedarkgoddess: I don't own Teen Titans. ((Terra/Beast Boy)) The poem between the parts is mine._

**Fighting Home**

Beast Boy sighed heavily, his green-haired head upward to the sky. Terra. The word repeated itself, chantlike, over and over in his head, refusing to leave him alone. The one word had stopped any other thoughts, including the pain attached to the word Terra, or any further memory of who she was and why he remembered her name so well. He couldn't bring himself around enough to feel anything at all, as he had been unable to for several hours.

The large crowd around Beast Boy began moving, and Beast Boy himself stood up off the splintering wooden park bench. He didn't really feel like he should be going anywhere, but his feet took the weight of the rest of his body and he began his slow shuffle forward, moving among the bodies as they surged toward the exit of the city park.

_Just fighting through,  
__struggling just to roam.  
__My feet fight forward, dragging on.  
__To the place I thought was home._

Both feet were caught behind him in a rather slow shuffle, and Beast Boy landed, almost neatly, head over feet. A blonde girl laughed, her laugh warm and friendly, as Beast Boy struggled back to his feet. The numb feeling left him as he looked at her, and the walls around the name Terra came crashing in. Terra, he thought, feeling as if he had just awakened from a deep sleep.. Terra had blonde hair, and blue eyes, and...

Mentally, he was able to see her. Her clothing, her hair falling into one side of her face, her smile...The way she had leaned in close to him for a final kiss... The way they had been unable to have the last kiss...He was flooded with memories of her, the hate in her eyes as she backed away from him, the love in her eyes only five minutes before, and the desperation he had seen in her face when she tried to ask him if they were still friends. Everything about her came back to him in a haunting, sudden rush.

She's not worth thinking about, he tried to tell himself, but was hardly surprised when the thought gave him no comfort at all. The crowd swept around him in a torrental wave, and he slowly followed it. Finding he had been swept out onto Main Street, he headed in the direction of Titans Tower. Some fangirls began chanting his name over and over, but with his thoughts on Terra and his head turned to the ground he managed to avoid hearing them somehow. Instead he noticed other people, heads down and eyes bent on the ground, fighting their way toward their houses and workplaces. He felt a special kindship with the ones that seemed unaware of anything except the thoughts they were trapped in, as he was feeling now. Heads down, they flowed around Beast Boy like he was just a rock in the river of their lives, there for a moment and then swept over by them, the water.

_Watching other people,  
__people just like me.  
__Ignoring losses that they mourn.  
__Just fighting on to see.  
__  
Fighting out each moment.  
__Trying to get anywhere.  
__Forcing myself not to know.  
__Although I know you won't be there._

I hope Terra's at home today, he thought to himself. I mean, it's been a week, maybe she finally got away from Slade. His brain immidatly kicked into gear, telling him that it was impossable, that Terra was never coming back, but he ignored what he already knew. His mind, at least, knew the truth, but his heart was holding back. Refusal is so much easier than acceptance, said a little voice in the back of his mind. Shut up, he told it firmly.

_I'm crawling in the dark.  
__Navigating with my heart so broken.  
__My mind knows but cannot tell me.  
__On everything I'm nearly choking.  
__  
How much further can I go?  
__Where before you're there?  
__How long must I live on what I'm handed?  
__Hanging by a single hair._

Beast Boy sighed again, trying to ignore the internal struggle going on between the two halfs of him that were most important: Mind and heart. Damn, he thought, this is pointless and I know it. He was too absorbed in himself to even notice the lack of noise as the fangirls shuffled away and the heavy silence of after-dark falling all around him. How could I have let it get this bad? He rounded on himself. Why couldn't I have used my eyes before my heart for once? She deserved my trust! I told her I would be her friend? How could I have been such a total goober? I was in the dark with her and it's really dark now that she's gone, he thought to himself, tiredly and quietly. "My life is over," he said out loud, his voice broken and hollow.

_More lights are shining.  
__Distantly, on what I thought was home.  
__I'll go in hopes of finding you.  
__Somehow, I'm all alone._

The lights blazed out over the lake as the shadowy, hunched form of the green teenager as he made his way toward the luminated giant T-shaped house. It's not a home anymore, he thought. It can never feel like a home. I've suffered too much there now. I...I never shed a tear, but it's been enough for me... Making his way up the hill, he could feel both palms sweating, his hair matted to his head, and he could already hear Raven's voice telling him that Terra wasn't here. His heart kept him pushing onward, toward the warm glow from the single light in the kitchen. Everyone was leaning, head first, over toward Robin. Plans were apparently continuing, plans to battle with the woman Beast Boy loved so much. "She ain't here, man," Cyborg said softly, then turned back. "...Can't go easy on Terra at all, then." Robin conculeded.

"She's not our friend anymore. She's a liar and a tradtor," Cyborg said, and Raven nodded sadly, her purple hair falling lightly into her violet eyes. She brushed it back, away from her face, and sighed again. She looked over at Beast Boy, who's face had turned red. Both eyes were shining, and Raven raised one hand as if to prevent him from speaking.

"Dude, Terra was our friend! How can you say that stuff? None of it was her fault, not one word of it was her fault, and what's furthermore, this is stupid! You're ploting against her like she's the ENEMY! Terra's going to come around! She'd never fight us! NEVER! I thought you guys understood, or at least cared! Tradiors, you're all a bunch of lying, sneaking TRAITORS!"

Leaving the others looking shocked, he ran up the stairs and away. Raven whispered something to them all about this being natural for him to be feeling and they let him go. "Terra! TERRA! Please be here! Tell the others you left him! At least come back to me! I need you." The realization that she wasn't coming back, mixed with the feelings of needing someone more than life itself, was too much for Beast Boy. Trying his hardest to avoid the tears that were coming on fast, he grabbed his present to Terra, the shining heart shaped box and flung himself aross her bed, once more in the form of a box, whimpering loudly for the rest of the night to avoid his human half's near acceptance.


	6. Keep Your Head Up

_((Rob/Star))_

**Keep Your Head Up**

_No, Starfire, Robin said for the hundreth time. Keep your head up when you shoot, keep your eyes forward. I don't want you to get hurt in a battle. It's important that you always pay attention to yourself first, your team second, no matter how much they need you. Never get yourself hurt. Only the team leader should worry about the team. Promise me, Starfire._

_Starfire nodded, her red hair flying around her head in the wind, her green eyes warm with the joy of being outside on the training course with Robin that chilly October day, warm from the instruction and the safe feeling that came from being with Robin. She was actually happy, at home here. The safety of life and love could be heard in the whispering wind. She was safe as a small child at home, and just as well-loved by her friends._

_A safe feeling, though, is one that is never meant to last._

Starfire thought back to that moment, thought to the laughs, the smiles, the warm jokes, his hands pulling hers up, his yells of "Keep your head up!" All of it was long gone and far away, and she could do nothing but shift in the hard metal chair, alone in Jump City Hospital's waiting room, her foot catching on the metal legs as she tucked it up under her, casting her eyes around anxiously, hating being alone. Alone because her friends were fallen. Alone because she had followed Robin's advice: Her head had been up, but the others had tried to save her. Their heads had been down, and their eyes had been blind to the tragady, their thoughts only of her. Only of HELPING her.

A sob came back to her, and the tears began their rythem of falling again. The desk clerk looked over at Starfire for the hunderth time that night: How had one Teen Titan escaped when the others were so close to death? And was this girl the type that would be able to go on without her friends? She walked over and handed Starfire a box of tissues, then returned to her post behind the desk in the otherwise-empty room. You didn't see too many cases when you worked late: Let alone cases like this one. The Teen Titans were well-known: She had been denying fans access all night, saying family only, even though she knew that this girl was the only one who would ever come to see them. They had stopped coming, leaving only the sounding tears.

Her head was down now, and her hair was matted. She tried to shut her eyes so she wouldn't have to see the blood covering her: Her uniform, once so neat, soaked in the blood of Robin from when she picked him up off the ground. The hospital had taken everyone else, but she herself had carried Robin until he had been pried from her arms. She had been hoping, wishing so hard that he would open his eyes, would speak to her, would magicly become Robin again.

It had been no one's fault, just a typical battle... Until Starfire had been cornered. Raven was the first to see, the first to react... She had come in, thinking fast, tried to hold Jynx back so that Starfire could run... And had been thrown aside. No one was even aware that she was bleeding: Everyone had thought she would be able to stand up again. Raven always got back up again, like a bird with broken wings that healed and learned to fly again. Raven, however, hadn't gotten back up.

She might never get up now...

_Her breath is shallow. Very shallow. And something happened to her spine in the fall. She's lucky she's not already dead. _The young intern had lifted Raven, putting her into the ambulence, apparently hoping his diognois was wrong. Starfire had heard someone whisper later that he was an enormous fan of the Teen Titans.

Starfire buried her head in her hands, tissues forgotten, Raven's face in her head, the last words Raven had spoken, "Azarath Metrion Zinthos!" ringing throughout it, bouncing off her skull. They sounded so laced with panic, so desperate to pull Starfire out of harm's way. Why does Robin wish for us not to protect one another? Why did Raven not listen to Robin?

Cyborg had seen Raven, seen her crash. Starfire had seen it in his face, the urge to run to her, but then he had seen Starfire and set his will power to keep moving. Jynx was having a few more problems with Cyborg than she let on, and Starfire had managed to dodge out of her corner, managed to free herself just as Gizmo went behind Cyborg, threw him into the wall, turned to her with a horrible grin. His hand fell over Raven's pale one, the human side of his face allowing it's own blood to mingle with hers, their hands touching, hidden from their friends by the rubble. Hidden from the breath of life by the rubble.

_The robotic part of his body has been damaged beyond repair. We probably won't be able to do anything. _Starfire heard that voice again of the doctor who had stood over Raven and Cyborg, talking to the young intern. Cyborg...

She couldn't do anything short of keeping her head down. The receptionist looked over at her. I wonder if anyone checked to see if she's in shock, she thought to herself. She's a team member too, after all. Even though she may be the only one to live...

Beast Boy had seen Gizmo and Jynx teaming up on Starfire, who was fighting back but losing terribly. Beast Boy left Robin to fighting Mammoth and ran over to Starfire. Jynx rounded on him, Gizmo continued to attack Starfire, determined to take her down. Beast Boy was fighting back and winning. "Not so brave without your gadgets, huh?" Beast Boy shot at him.

"Maybe not, snotmuncher," Gizmo shot slyly, "But here's a new toy I got." A rocket hit the now T-Rex boy directly in his chest. He flew off in the other direction, his body unready for the shock of the rocket. He landed on the ground, nine stories down, becoming a green and red mark on the black below them.

_He's in serious trouble. Nine stories is no normal fall. He needs to be in the critical ward. I doubt he'll make it. Most of his skin is gone. It came off in slabs, practicly. _They had hooked Beast Boy up to some sort of machine, leaving him in another ambulence, his head down, his eyes shut. Perminatly.

Her thoughts were of her friends, of her battle, the story, the horror of it all, replaying in her head, keeping the tears coming, hot and fast, tears she had never had a reason to cry. I have reason now, she thought, but the memories were not quite through tormenting her. She remembered the cruel, unjust end, saw the Boy Wonder in her head...

Robin and Starfire were backed together, their hands touching each other. "Keep your head up," he whispered to her, and then they were gone from each other, fighting the battle. Robin was intently winning when he noticed Starfire laying on the ground, the other two HIVE members standing over her. Robin lept toward her, followed by Mammoth, and pushed her out of the way. In doing so, however, he permitted Mammoth to get him pinned to the ground, punching every inch of Robin he could reach.

"Robin!" She had pelted Mammoth. Gizmo said something, Jynx had quietly hissed something back, and they had gone, all of them, leaving the all but defeated team in their wake. Starfire had gone directly to his side and flown with him. He slipped in and out of the real world, muttered words that made no sense, limp against her frail form, weak in her terrified arms.

_How did he get like this? Are there any others? I can't belive... All of them? Except you? _The nurse had stared at Robin, at Robin's limp, bloody form, and then taken him, prying him from Starfire's unwilling hands, screaming for an ambulence to follow Starfire's direction to her other friends.

"Your friends are asking for you, dear," a kind voice said. A white clad nurse looked down at her. "This way, if you don't mind," she continued to croon. Starfire finally managed to find her legs and followed the nurse down the hallway, the empty feeling inside her growing more profound with each doctor that ran past, each word she heard them exchange, all of them headed the same way she was. She gulped as one of the doctors stopped her.

"Listen, don't say anything to upset your friends. They just woke up and all of them, "his gentle voice dropped even further, "Are in pretty bad shape. Particuarly Robin. And Raven. The girl suffered complete brusing to her backbone and severe blood loss. Robin's body is bleeding internally. All are questionable. Come on, and remember, don't cry or anything. Just keep your head up. Stay strong." Suddenly she was in the room, among four beds, each bed baring her friends, hooked up to many different machines. Starfire wrestled there with her own emotions in the doorway. Remain strong. Remain strong. She chanted to herself, but a voice interupted.

"Star? You okay?" The voice asked from one of the beds. Cyborg's voice, the strong humor gone from it now. His dark skin looked so pale to her...

"I am fine, friend Cyborg. And you yourself?" Just keep smiling.

"My head feels like it's been pounded in, and my systems are shutting down, but it's nice just to be able to see you. Take care of yourself, you hear me?" He relaxed his head, quit straining to see her, his head limp to the pillow, the life all but gone from his eyes.

"I have heard you. And you must take care also," she said. Quickly, she turned away, her eyes full of tears, but they quickly had to be brushed away. Starfire turned away, but her alternate chosen direction was no better. Beast Boy lay there, the sight of him litterly tramatizing, the green gone, a mangled body in it's place, a bloody pulp. "Starfire?" The stranger croaked, but the voice was still that which should have come from Beast Boy's mouth.

"Beast Boy." She made herself move forward, taking his hand, the IV tangling one of her hands, as if enraged that she too was not hanging from the thread of life above the pit of death. "How are you feeling, friend?"

"About the same as Cyborg, only it's my whole body. Starfire, if I don't make it, keep being yourself. You've kept me modivated even when the whole team was having problems. Be perky for whoever you happen to find to be happy with." Beast Boy stared into her eyes. "Always keep smiling. I know everyone wants you to be happy."

"Nothing will happen, Beast Boy," she said, ignorning the doctor's words in her head. "And I will, do not worry."

"Good. That's what I like to hear." He turned away from her, eyes back to the wall, moving his arms appering to be a difficult task for him as he struggled to place them back at his side. As a result, he gave up and permitted it to stay there, still gripping the air where Starfire's warm life-filled hand had been.

Raven looked over, although all that moved were her eyes, her body apparently ravaging her beyond anything, her face almost contorted against the emotions that came to her, the anger and hurt of being so obviously far gone. Raven had the look of someone who had gone down fighting, but knew that fighting with anything but her emotions and her pain in these last few minutes wouldn't be worth it. "Starfire, come here." She said softly, glowing eyes and greyish skin standing out against the white montony of the sheets, of the walls and the single painting hung over the bed. Starfire sat obediantly on the edge of Raven's bed as she would have sat on Raven's bed in Titan's Tower.

"Starfire, I know I've never been as close to you as maybe I should have... But you've still been like a sister, in my room, my stuff, and in my life, smiling even when I wouldn't... When I couldn't smile... Listen, I know you're not going to understand this, that you don't want to hear it, that shock and grief are going to keep you from really hearing me, but thank you. For everything. You've helped me as well as annoyed, and everything was worthwhile in the end. Never lose your smile..." Her words faded, escaped, and her eyes shut, pain from hardly moving, the blood pouring from the open wound again, one of the machines beeping. The doctors shoved Starfire to the side, practicly off the bed, and she longed to run from the room where Raven lay dying, Raven who, on her death bed, had showed how much she cared. A tear started to run down her face.

_Stand strong, keep your head up, no crying. _She heard the words, a blend of the doctor and Robin's voices, echoing around inside her skull.

Alas, she couldn't run as soon as she heard the next voice.

"Starfire?"

She turned to him, came close to him, his skin blending with the pillow, his hair soaked with sweat, his teeth set, his breathing heavy. Blood was around him, over him, and she remembered the doctors said he was internally bleeding. "Robin." She sank down next to him, touched a hand to her hair.

"Starfire, I don't know how much longer I'm going to be here..." He placed one of his arms around her shoulders, and Starfire could see the veins pulsing, fighting to deliver the blood, could see the bones through his now nearly-transparent skin. She moved her hands around him, fighting the feeling of revulsion, ignoring the eyes of the doctors on her, seeing what she might be doing, but all she felt like doing was holding onto Robin, sheltering him, sheltering her friends from death, taking it upon herself to die in their place.

They refused to break away from each other for several long minutes, and when they finally did look at each other, there was pain in both of their eyes. "Starfire, I love you. This is the only time I'll have to say it, but I do love you..."

"Robin... I am feeling the Earthly love for you also." He whispered for her to put her face closer, and she did, their lips brushing, touching, Robin kissing with the intensity that he might have had if he could stand up. Starfire kissed lightly, afraid of this moment, the final feeling it all brought.

And then the meter went dead. Robin departed her life. Raven was the one to point this out to the doctors, her weak voice trailing off. "Robin... Check on Robin, I'm fine..." She hissed at the doctors, all of whom looked over in terror at where the Boy Wonder lay. "We're going to need to run a couple scans, but I'm pretty sure he's gone."

Starfire couldn't bear those words, and her booted feet ran from the room, ran along the road, ran toward the tower. Part of her wanted her friends to be there, acting as if nothing had happened.

_I know they are gone. _

The funeral was townwide, although Starfire was the only one there with any real right to mourn. She was the only one who knew them, knew them not just as protectors but as friends, as people with flaws, who knew that the half-robot had loved meat. She was the only one who knew about the true, caring emotions of the gothic girl running under the surface of her mask, of the lie she lived. She was the one who had laughed so many times, who knew how funny and interesting Beast Boy could be. And she herself had been the one to hold Robin as she died, had kissed him, had held him as he died.

She turned away from the new graves, tried to keep her feelings inside until after the crowd left. Choosing the tree directly above Robin's grave, using the rope plundered from his room, she tightened the knot on her own neck.

Within two days there was a fifth grave, the Teen Titans friends and lovers even in their death. _The security was gone now. The smile was gone now. Her laughter could not, as her friends had hoped, grace anyone else. It was, instead, sent to them for the eternity they all had to look at their mistakes: Having a heart had been her mistake, living and loving and learning had been her mistake. What all said is true: Sometimes, it's easier not to care than to love someone so much it hurts._

**Raventhedarkgoddess: And I see part of my dark muss has returned. Good. Not as good as I expected... Sorry.**


	7. Her Eyes

_**Raventhedarkgoddess: Rae/Cy, written at two in the morning. If it's as bad as I think, flame.**_

**Her Eyes**

_**Cyborg**_

_**Her eyes. **From the time I first saw her, they bothered me. In fact, they haunted me. What was a girl like her, such a pretty girl, doing with such sad eyes, old eyes? Why did she look so familer, so distant? What was her trama, her past? And who, why, did I get such feelings staring into them? Who are you? I wanted to ask that so badly, just to see what she would say, but I was tounge-tied, fearful of what she might say. I was scared of the way she might reject me. I saw how cold she was, but something in me liked that coldness, wanted to try anyway, wanted to try to be someone she could care about. I wanted to give her something to live for._

_All that time, I think I wanted something to live for myself. I mean, life goes by fast, fragile, and when no one cares, no one cares, and it's dark, very dark, every night. I went back to my empty bed, all alone. It's quiet late at night, when I lay there and stare out the window blankly, human eye teared up, the robotic one unblinking. I like that about my robotic eye. It doesn't give away what I'm feeling. Not like her eyes do. Human eyes, full of hate._

_Sure, she tries to hide it. She tries very hard, with her ugly scowl, her hair thrown off the way it is, but all the same, I can see through her. I know how she is. I wanted to know her, who she was, but I just couldn't. I don't understand why I can't make myself do these things. What is it with me? She's the one hiding her emotions, so I should be able to show her how to feel them. At least I thought I could._

_I just didn't understand her then. That is, until Beast Boy popped zits in that mirror and I ended up in her mind. Although Beast Boy showed it more than I did, I was eager to find out the secrets about her. I thought maybe I could see a little ray of her liking me. Nothing is ever like you hope, though, when she showed up and that thing that I'm guessing was her day came upon her. Helping her defeat it was good. It felt nice, right in the heart I didn't think I could use. Being a robot is being a robot, no matter if you're half or whole, and sometimes it's easier to give into the infulence of your system then to try to fight. She couldn't show them, but now that I understood her a little more, I was more curious then ever._

_I'd notice her open up once in a while, with a blush or a smile. It felt right. I love the way she smiled, if she smiled. The perfection of her smile was warm, rarely seen, often felt, though. The first time she ever flashed a smile, a faint one that barely played with her lips, in my direction, I fell in love with it. I kept it fixed into my memory, where it's going to have to stay from now on._

_Then there was the whole thing with my baby, the T-car. I didn't think anyone understood how much I loved it, and especilly not Raven, with her cold scowl and the words, "It's just a car." She came around, though, as if awakening or something. She understood. Understanding isn't something I was used to. It's not something I'll ever get used to._

_I saw her face twist in fury when we were chasing them down, her hands controling the wheel without touching it. She seemed to finally be feeling something: And it was toward me. The chip in her hand, floating toward me, almost touching... I felt as if she could touch my heart with that hand of hers. I rememeber the hours we spent afterward, down in the basment of the house, building the car back up, building it up from that one chip. And at the end, just as we finally made it work, she flashed me the cheesiest grin: That grease streak across her face was perfect. It's fixed in my head: I'm picturing it now, picturing her now._

_The pain is too deep for me to put into reasonable thoughts. How could it have happened so easily, so quickly, without anything to it? Where does a depressed angel go? I understand she wasn't even human, that she was even part devil, but did a girl like her deserve to die? She was meant to live for something. And without her..._

_I'll never forget that battle. We were all just fighting Slade, living to grind against Slade, and she died? How is that right? How can anything like that be right? Why does she deserve to die? Who said she deserved it? I couldn't protect her. I couldn't have even reached her in time. I just watched her fall to the ground, covered in her own blood, the blood that proved she was only human, only a human girl. Raven... I could have sacrificed myself for her. Anyone could have. Now I hate myself. I hate Starfire, I hate Robin, I hate Beast Boy... I hate everyone and everything, because they're alive. Raven is gone._

_Raven was buried shortly after that. Putting her body in the ground under her favorite tree, the one where she used to sit and meditate, the tree where she and I shared our first and only kiss, was one of the worst things I've ever had to do. I ran away, tears pouring from my eye, the red optical unblinking, always unblinking. I never looked back, never wanted to see Robin say his final words as we left. I stared, my red eye always staring back at me while I cried, in the mirror for hours. I couldn't take it. I'm sitting with the shattered glass around my feet._

_It's over. Everything is over. She's really gone, really really gone. And I can't keep up with it. I won't take this. I cannot take it. My power cell's running out. It's the last one. The charger's out, shattered around with my mirror. Everything is gone. And while I don't understand the past she held, I know this: My life was changed by that strange girl. I've been ruined by those eyes. And those eyes are going to be in the grave, in my memory and in my heart. I only hope the others with bury me with her. My premature death is a cause of life's end: I died because I wasn't afraid to give my heart away._

Cyborg's body was found in his room, with the shattered chargers, batteries, and mirror laying around his feet. The note in his hand was simple: Bury him with the reason he was dying. Bury him along with Raven, where he wanted to be buried anyway. Robin looked at the grave one last time, blinking back the tears as he looked at their headstones:

Raven Roth: _'Free Flying'_

Cyborg: _'Along for the Flight'_


	8. Meant To Live

_Raventhedarkgoddess: Fluffy tradady one-shot. ((Rae/Rob)) I don't own Switchfoot's song 'Meant To Live.'_

**Meant To Live**

_Fumbling his confidence  
__And wondering why the world has passed him by  
__Hoping that he's bound for more than arguements  
__And failed attempts to fly, fly._

Raven Roth stood alone in the kitchen. Always alone, she thought. That's me. The moon shone down through the large window from the living room, the only light in the otherwise dark tower. The tea cup in her hand felt warm, although the warmth did not feel comforting in any way, shape, or form. Confort is a thing of the past, she reminded herself. You live only to save the others, the other people who deserve so much more of a life than the one they lead. I was always alone. I cannot leave anyone else that way.Being broken is not a possible option.

Robin sat at his desk. He was beyond sleep, although his eyes were barely open. It's always like this, he thought. Why can't I sleep? Why can't I ever sleep? He thought about something he thought would calm him down: Starfire. But as her naive, sweet face floated into his mind, he couldn't even begin to feel calm: He could feel nothing at all. Lately, he could stare into her eyes, try to look into her heart, but it didn't work out.

He still whispered the words at night. He told her when she snuggled up to him that he loved her, stroked her hair when she asked him to, and explained things to her, but it never really felt like it used to. Is it possible to fall OUT of love with a person? He shook the thought away, pushed it away, almost as if by ignoring the possibility it would fall from existence. The light danced across his face, the black of his haircontrasted by his white skin. The paper in front of him was blotched with ink and scribbles, but the only thing that he had figured out was that nothing was going to add up for him.

Raven looked around the place she had to call home, the only place she had ever called home. The couch she was sitting on was nothing more than a dark mass in the shadows, the tv staring at her with the reflected light. Her own violet eyes caught the light of the moon, the moon reflected wildly, almost with a beauty Raven was unaware she had. She caught her expression: Mysterious and scared. What are you doing up anyway? She snapped at herself. You should be sleeping.

At once, she didn't understand why she had that thought. Sleep was impossable for her most nights, and she knew it. There's more to it than that, she told herself. I just don't know what yet. She decided that reasoning things out was pointless for her and she reclined her head, the cup still in her hand, which had already been burned. Raven never felt it happen.

Robin headed down the spiral staircase, all alone. He sat down on the couch, unaware that the room was not empty. He felt something, a need for comfort, the kind he used to turn to Starfire for, but he knew he could not find comfort in her demanding idea of a relationship. Instead, he relaxed on the corner of the couch, uneasiness creeping into him: He had the feeling that he was being watched. All confidence momentaraly gone, he thought about how everything was spinning in circles, never making sense to him. And for some reason, Raven popped into his head and wouldn't go away. "Raven," he whispered aloud, unable to explain why the word had come to him.

Raven looked up out of her own dark thoughts. "Who said my name?" She was disugusted with the edge of fear in her voice. Suck it up, you big baby, she told herself. Hating thinking, hating not thinking, she looked around the dark room.

Robin sat straight, banging his head off the back of the couch as he looked in the direction of the whiper. The lamplike eyes that stared at him were reconisable even in the dark at a distance: They belonged to Raven. He gulped, glad he had said nothing more than her name, and tried to think up a clever lie. "What are you doing up at this hour?" Lame, he told himself as the words left his lips. He found himself worried about what she thought of him, but tried to brush it off. She doesn't care, she's just a teammate...

Raven looked over at him. "The same thing I'm assuming you are. Inability to sleep isn't a crime, now is it?" Her voice was back to it's cold monotone, which she used to her advantage, quite happy Robin couldn't hear the fear and slight anger behind it. Just don't think, don't feel...

Why do you let everything pass you up? He asked himself furiously. Now she probably thinks I'm a complete idiot, or she's mad at me... At the thought of Raven being mad, he cringed, although unsure of why. Raven noticed his cringe but said nothing, figuring it was unimportant but still wishing she knew what he was thinking. "No, it's not a crime. I didn't mean to sound like I was accusing you or anything, I just didn't see you..." Once again, lame, he told himself. Do you think she's really going to belive that?

I don't belive that for a second, she told herself. I wish he'd be honest with me. "Something's wrong with you," she said slowly. "It wouldn't hurt you that much to talk about it."

What would she know? Since when does she talk about her life, about her? I want to know, he thought, them withdrew from that thought as if it had bit him. It's just Raven, just Raven looking very, very pretty... He slapped himself, mentaly and hard. "I dunno... It just seems like the world runs unfairly, like nothing makes sense. I mean, life, death, hurt, blood, pain... Does it all mean something? And what about love?" Then ending question made him want to punch something. Why the hell did you say that to her? Just tell her about Starfire while you're at it, he told himself coldly.

"What of it? Robin, this is the real world, no fantasy. I'm not going to lie to you. Nothing is ever quite what it seems, and everything is always wrong. We're fighting, this team, for what we belive in. But even that could be wrong. What I'm trying to say is no matter how many times you fail to fly, no matter how often you fight, you're going nowhere again and again." The stare she gave him was full of emotion, something he had never seen there: Hurt and anger and what might have been sadness were apparent.

_We were meant to live for so much more  
__Have we lost ourselves?  
__Somewhere we live inside.  
__Somewhere we live inside.  
__We were meant to live for so much more.  
__Have we lost ourselves?  
__Somewhere we live inside._

"So what are you saying? That I shouldn't even try? I haven't lost myself that much, you know." He challenged her due to anger at the truth, the truth she was speaking and the truth in his head: He loved her. He continued to attempt to shake that feeling, but to no avail.

Raven was about to respond, to tell him something about herself, to make him understand, when the gem at her throat began to flash. She knew what that meant: The city was under attack. Anything she had meant to say to Robin would have to wait. They were meant to live for more than running at the sound of the alarm, but for now that was how it would have to be. The rest of the team came running down the stairs, all ready, and, without another word, the group ran out into the night.

"Slade!" Robin yelled. Raven looked over at him, his face tight, his body pained. This is what he thinks is worth fighting for, she thought. She looked over, eyes glued on Slade, trying to show him some support, trying to mirror his fury. That's impossible and you know it, she said to herself, then felt a deep sense of love, hate, and overall anger at the world, a feeling she knew her calm outerface was hiding, and was pretty much sick of only being able to hide it.

"You'd like me to answer that. You'd like to play superhero, wouldn't you, Robin?" The eyes, barely visable through the mask, stared straight at him, unblinking and cold. "You'd like to think you're a man who can have the ladies, the car, the power..." Slade was knocked down by Cyborg.

"Yo, watch your mouth," he warned. He looked over at Robin, who was rigid with fury. Raven put her hand on his shoulder, not sure why she felt the need to give him comfort. He smiled at her. "Raven..." He started hurriedly, wanting to tell her in front of Starfire, his way of telling her they were through.

At that moment, Slade got back up and jumped straight for them. The two of them, so wrapped up in each other, did not see the pole, and did not notice Slade until the metal cracked against Raven's skull. She fell, limp, in Robin's arms.

_Dreaming about Providence.  
__And whether mice or men have second tries.  
__Maybe we've been living with our eyes half open.  
__Maybe we're bent and broken, broken._

"RAVEN!" The blood came, fast, but also fell unnoticed. Robin was concerned only with her shut eyes, her dark hair. "Raven! Wake up! Wake up!" He heard Slade, heard him laughing, and then there was nothing. The silence of him, of his teammates, of time itself, was crushing.

"Come ON!" Now he was irritated, furious. He had never felt this way about anyone before, and he needed to know if she felt the same way, if she COULD feel the same way. Everyone else stared, beyond feeling, pity, or help, in the musty building and watched Robin cling to Raven. Starfire watched with horror, horror at Raven's blood and at Robin. Is it possible that Raven and he were meant for each other and not him and I? The question ran in her head.

"Robin?" The girl in his arms said, squinting, raising one hand to his shoulder, trying to pull herself up, away from him, trying and failing to stand. She coughed, more blood falling. Her head went down and she could do nothing else.

"It's me, Robin, and we're going to get you out of here, you're going to be okay," he said quickly, fearing any other possiblity, fearing what might come out of failure. No, I won't lose her! He told himself. "I love you and you're going to be okay."

She eyed him up, wide-eyed. "I love you too. But don't waste your time on... me, please. I'm gone, a bird with broken wings. No second chances here... Go get Slade. He's the one you want to...kill. Don't watch...me... die. Get him..." Her voice trailed off completly, the opticals struggling to stay open. Her purple eyes reflected the moon beautify, with the intensity of life and death, of forever or just a few minutes, the mysterious allure giving way only to love.

"He's gone." Beast Boy stared at the two of them, then at Starfire, who's mouth was open and wide, tears running down her cheeks.

"Robin, I had no idea..." She began, then dropped off at the sight of his tears, his mutterings, and floated a few feet off the floor, doing nothing, saying nothing, in complete denial.

_We were meant to live for so much more  
__Have we lost ourselves?  
__Somewhere we live inside  
__Somewhere we live inside.  
__We were meant to live for so much more.  
__Have we lost ourselves?  
__Somewhere we live inside._

"You KNOW you have to live. You mean something! You were meant to live for something! Raven, we talked about meaning. You give me meaning. If you leave, it's gone. I just found you, just finally found you, don't leave me, please don't leave me..." Everyone else was lost to him. Gone forever. The only thing he cared about was forcing herself not to fade.

"I don't want to... leave you. Ever..."

"And you're not going to. You're staying right here." And he hugged her, lightly, almost as if afraid to touch her. She hugged back with what little strength she possessed. And the tears continued to fall, as heavy as the forgotten rain outside, heavy as the broken promises between them: As heavy as all tears are.

The rest of the team was pulling back. Cyborg ran outside, trying to bring his car up to the entrance so they could get Raven somewhere, Beast Boy numbed by the whole experence, and Starfire just hovering, still in denail, the shock too great, her body unable to handle it.

Robin ran with Raven's body to the car. "It's going to be okay," he hissed, over and over, chantlike.

_We want more than this world's got to offer.  
__We want more than this world's got to offer.  
__We want more than the wars of our fathers  
__And everything inside screams for second life, yeah_

"You and I need to live for everything, Raven. Everything. You and I are bent for more than arguments, bent for more than failed attempts, bent for more than everything. Please!" He hugged tighter, against her squeal of protest. "Raven..."

She used the minority of her power to force his hands back. "Robin... Just remember me as I was, as we were, in the living room. I'm dying. This is all I can make myself say." She stopped, knowing she was hurting him but unable to stop.

"You will not! You will not!" Everyone kept their heads turned, lost in their own grief, afraid of this angry, love-losing person Robin was becoming. Raven lay against him, helpless to stop him, and did something she had never thought she would do: Cried. The windows on Cyborg's car exploded around them, the flying glass black, the cracks obvious. No one spoke, Robin pulling her tightly to him. "You will not," he said in a whisper. "You can't."

"Robin, I don't have a choice. You, you were meant to keep living without me. You need to live, Robin, and remember that I love you." Her lips pressed his, softly as a butterfly, and Robin knew it would be their only kiss. He kissed back, ignoring Starfire, his whole being focused on Raven. Suddenly, she fell back, fell away. She was dead, and Robin knew it. His own tears came again as Cyborg studied the damage. Man, I think there's more damage done then ever before, and not just in terms of my car. He pulled over, waiting for the feeling to fade, waiting to be able to drive again, knowing somewhere inside him that it would never fade: He had lost Raven and Robin in one blow, and Starfire seemed to be slipping away.

_We were meant to live for so much more  
__Have we lost ourselves?  
__Somewhere we live inside  
__Somewhere we live inside.  
__We were meant to live for so much more.  
__Have we lost ourselves?  
__Somewhere we live inside._

Robin stood at her graveside, finally able to come after two long, painful years of being kept away. He saw the bird etched into the headstone, thought of her final words, fought the urge to join her in the ground, but it didn't work. The overdose of pills he had taken was kicking in. He sank to her grave. "I was meant to live," he whispered to the headstone, "But not without you." Feeling as if he had lost himself to the hole inside his heart, he lay down next to her headstone and felt the world ebbing away. His eyes came to rest silently on the blackness inside.

It was Starfire to find his body, quite on accident, bringingflowersas she so often did to the little grave with the angel Robin had insisted be etched in there, death's oxi moron for the daughter of the devil who had knownfrom the day she was born she belonged in hell.Starfire's eyes burned as she read the note: _Love is once, love is forever. Love leaves me here. _"This is not right..." Starfire whispered.

_**Robin was buried next to Raven the next day**_


	9. Parting

Cyborg's eyes clouded over as he gave in within his mind to another place, another time, and he remembered the girl he hadn't seen in seven years.

**Seven years ago...**

_"All I need is a little more time," Raven said, a pleading edge on her gothic monotone, a shimmer in her purple opticals at the thought of Cyborg leaving, the thought of Cyborg rejecting her. "I just need a little more time." _

_"How much more time do you want?" His voice hit it's roughest pitch, yet it was also dark and cold. "Raven, two years is enough time, but I don't know anything about you. I've have trust, I've had love, and I've had patenice. I can't keep showing things that are never returned." He looked her in her eyes, trying to ignore the feeling he got at seeing her so close to tears. "The least you could do is TRY, Raven." His blue human eye narrowed, trying to force anger he wasn't feeling into his face, hoping the red robotic eye made up for his human one. _

_"I don't want this to be hard," she told him matter-of-factly. "I thought you understood: I may have problems expressing my emotions. You know what goes on inside my head... Don't you care at all?" She dared herself to match his glare with one of her own, to keep her thoughts hidden. If he doesn't care about you, don't care about him, she told herself, knowing this wasn't quite true._

_"I care, Raven. Maybe it's you who doesn't, though, because even if you can't show it, couldn't you give me a kiss once in a while, at least SAY 'I love you'? Tell me, Raven, when was the last time you met my eyes with a look, a real look, one that said something about who you are and who you see in me? Huh?" He kept pressing, his anger welling in his throat, the human eye that had done nothing for so long threatening to spill over with tears._

_"Maybe you're mistaken. Maybe all this has been empty, no feelings, no real words. Maybe I'll never be good enough." Her voice was tiny, quiet, and hard for him to hear, something about it so different, so unfit for the girl he knew and had thought he loved, that he wanted to hug her and tell her how sorry he was. But something held him in place, the fury in his eyes and throat choking but also comforting him, because anger was a much more solid emotion than love could ever be. And then she did it: Brushing back her oddly colored hair, she stared at him, and both of her eyes were as emotionless as the day they met. The girl he cared about was driven away from him. She stepped back, stepped slowly away from him, the shadows of the stairwell ingulfing her, taking her up the stairs, still staring at him, staring straight through the closed door to her room._

_He felt them come, felt the tears, felt the emotion, felt the need to scream. But he refused to scream. Instead he stiffened his resolve. He would tell Robin in the morning. But the morning converstaion was first between Robin and Raven, and Raven announced she was stepping out of her spot on the team. The four Teen Titans watched her go, the way she left hitting them all in the chest, but leaving Cyborg with no words to say. He went out the door, down the road, toward a place he knew of where he could be alone and not get the usual strange looks: He was headed for the bar._

Cyborg sighed and looked at the beer can in his hand.

_She put him out like the burnin' end of a midnight cigarette  
__She broke his heart he spent his whole life tryin' to forget  
__We watched him drink his pain away a little at a time  
__But he never could get drunk enough to get her off his mind  
__Until the night _

_It'll just never be enough_, he told himself. _I need Raven back_. Yet at the same time, something inside him told him Raven wasn't coming back. And a part of it hated himself for it, but another part of his heart wanted to hate her as much as it wanted to hold her. _This is so messed up..._

_He put that bottle to his head and pulled the trigger  
__And finally drank away her memory  
__Life is short but this time it was bigger  
__Than the strength he had to get up off his knees  
__We found him with his face down in the pillow  
__With a note that said I'll love her till I die  
__And when we buried him beneath the willow  
__The angels sang a whiskey lullaby _

And then he knew what he needed to do. I can't drink her away, he told himself. Then he thought of stories he'd heard, stories about the end of pain really lying through a portal, a portal known only to man as death. He knew that, even half-robot, he could die, and maybe, if he died, regreat could leave him. "What's the worst that could happen?" He said aloud, pulling out the small gun, taken from a villan, that he knew could do the job.

"Friend Cyborg!" Sweet naive Starfire was calling through the door, to the boy who she still tried to make laugh after seven years without a smile of any kind. "Cyborg, breakfast has been prepared by Robin, not Beast Boy. Please come and see!" She didn't recive an answer, and she tenitvly turned the knob.

What she saw shocked her. Cyborg had one hand on a picture of Raven and himself, just after they had started dating, his face hidden by a white, fluffy pillow. Or what should have been a white pillow. The blood that soaked it was crimson, pouring from the human side of his face. Starfire's eyes went wide, her hands began to shake, and she stood, taking the scene in, not daring to breath the slight stench of death in the room. Then her lips parted, and her legs unfroze. She ran, screaming and sobbing, until her head connected with Robin's shoulder and she clung to him, wordlessly howling.

"Friend Cyborg..." She managed, then sank dead away.

Across town, Raven sat, alone in her small, cold apartment, her black skirt trailing her as she walked to the couch, trying to ignore the slight sloshing of the whisky in her glass. The hand around it was frail, paler and longer then the hand that had helped Cyborg wax the T-car seven summers ago, different then the hand that had come to Starfire's mouth or Beast Boy's head, different then the hand she had used for good those years ago. Now it worked, cleaned, and mixed drinks. Suddenly, a loud knock on her door startled her. Playing over her still-short purple hair, hurrying to hide the drink glass in the kitchen, popping a mint into her mouth, she headed toward the oaken door that seperated her from the rest of the world.

"Raven." That was all Robin could bring himself to say. His friend's eyes were much older, sader than the day she'd left them. She looked back at him, her high heels giving her a little bit of an extra head on him, her body braced in the doorway, so pitifully, her arms thinner than ever in the black shirt, hugging herself.

"Raven, it's about Cyborg!" Beast Boy blurted out, unable to keep himself silent. He didn't want to hold the note they'd found next to the bloody body, didn't want to hold onto the last thing Cyborg had done before he'd died, didn't want to look at the girl before him, the once-strong Raven Roth reduced to nothing but this thin shell, fighting to get by in the world.

"Well, where is he?" Her voice came out sharp, ragged, and she saw an apprihension in her eyes they hadn't seen there before. _She's really worried about Cyborg_, Robin thought, frozen and trapped by his own greif and the greif of Raven. "Where is Cyborg, Robin?" One hand drew away from herself, into one of the first acts of human contact she'd made since she lost Cyborg: She grabbed onto Robin's shoulder, nails dug in.

She was hurting him, actually hurting him. Robin leaned to her, his voice as soft and gentle as he could make it in her ear. "He's dead." The words of comfort he had come to say were gone. He told her only the truth, and watched her eyes get big, her mouth freeze up, and tears come to the violet of her eyes.

"Did he die in a battle? Who killed him? I'll kill them." _Savage tears,_ Starfire thought. _I would react the same way to being told of Robin. _Raven had released Robin, was herding them back inside. The dark apartment held about as much cheer as Raven's room had once held, but no one said anything to her about the decor. That was how she liked things, they knew. The only real light in her light had been them, her friends... Robin felt a pang of dirty guilt. _I should have forced her to stay_, he thought. _Then Cyborg would still be alive and Raven... _He looked into her cold, upset face, saw the tears, and shuddered. She was obviously someone she didn't want to be.

"Truth is, Raven... He kind of... Well..." Beast Boy was stuttering. Robin snatched the note out of his hand and gave it to Raven.

"He left that. He... Oh Raven..." Robin found that, for the first time as the leader of the Titans, he was fearful of Raven, fearful and speechless. "He killed himself." She didn't respond, her hand on the note, ripping it open, reading it.

"Oh my God." That was all Raven said, her eyes wet and her body shaking, black energy embracing various objects, throwing them around, adding to the chaos. "You haven't buried him yet, have you? I want to say... Say goodbye." She finished, trying to remain strong and avoid falling to peices. The others nodded to her and they walked the three blocks back to Titans Tower. There she saw the hole the others had finished, the black box of an open casket, and walked over. Her beloved had been cleaned of all blood, but she could still imagine how terrible he had looked. _And it's all my fault, _she thought miserably.

They stood under the old willow, her favorite tree, which was behind the tower. She had first professed her love to Cyborg there, had first kissed his lips, had first overworked her emotions to keep them still, had meditated there and watched the moon there whenever she couldn't stand to be in her room anymore. She watched Robin and Beast Boy, shoulders hunched and tears running, close the lid. She couldn't stand it anymore, yet she stood there anyway, transfixed, some form of morbid fasination keeping her there, helping her to keep her hand steady to lower him, to replace the dirt. Starfire watched Raven, could tell how close Raven was to breaking down, but didn't say a word. Raven bid them all a very fast goodbye and almost ran home, keeping herself from running only by thinking the word calm over and over.

**Three Long Years Later...**

_The rumors flew but nobody knew  
__how much she blamed herself  
__For years and years she tried to hide  
__the whiskey on her breath  
__She finally drank her pain away  
__a little at a time But she never could  
__get drunk enough to get him off her mind  
__Until the night_

Raven sighed, all alone, in that same small apartment where she'd first been told about Cyborg. The decorations hadn't changed much, and the room was overall damp and cool. She hardly used her powers anymore, but that didn't save her the need to mediate, which she had been doing until the craving to get up hit her. She wanted to forget about Cyborg, who was always in her thoughts. She had been trying. At first, it had been nothing, just a glass of whisky now and then to ease her depression. It had gotten far worse since he died, though, and the glass in her hand was the fourth of the evening.

She knew the rumors that had flown around town, the rumors that concerned her. She had very little contact with anyone, save the old team members. Not that they were a team anymore, but they did come around once in a while to see how she was, to see if their old friend needed anything. Ten years, ten very long years had passed since she'd left them: She was very lucky they cared at all. Yet Starfire still acted like a sister, Beast Boy tried to make her laugh, and Robin played the role of a brother, her shoulder to cry into and the person to talk to about Cyborg. None of them seemed to blame her.

_But what about you?_ She asked herself. _You know you did it. You were the one who stepped away. You were cold, too cold... You loved him and never said it. You wouldn't stand by him. It's your fault, you know it is. _She looked at the glass in her hand. _It'll just never be enough. He'll always be here, so close, so so close..._

And then she heard the answer in her head. _If you can't beat him, _it crooned, _and you can't get him back, join him. _She knew where the gun was, the gun she'd had for years, the gun she'd been afraid to use.

_I can do this now. _The feelings inside her came out, the love, the hate, and the passion to die. She didn't understand, never could have understood what possessed her or anyone else to do such a thing. _Cyborg... _She took his picture in her hand, the picture he had taken in his the night he had fallen. The pillow below her was the only becon in the dark room. She looked over at the picture of the five of them and set a small note next to it. The note read: _I know, I know. What the hell is she doing dead? Why did she leave us? I know I don't have the rights to do this. You guys have tried, you deserve more credit than this. The truth is, though, you only get one shot at life, and that comes with your only shot at love. I had mine: I failed. Failure is not a crime, it just means you have lost the right to keep living. And I've done that. I pushed Cyborg away, I pushed everyone away, and now I'm alone, teetering on the brink of my own destruction, held back only by thoughts of you. Although selfish, I will have gone through with it when you find this. Please, do not hate me, although you have every right. Remember me, not as you found me, but as I used to be: Alive and filled with unshowed love in Cyborg's arms. I'm going to him. Maybe he'll forgive me. Maybe you can forgive me. Thank you for everything and goodbye. Raven_

She sighed, the knife of doubt that was usually with her overcoming her. _No, I will do this,_ she told herself. She took a practice shot with the hand that was not on Cyborg's picture, making sure she could shoot the small weapon, and blasted a bottle of whisky. _There,_ she told herself. _It's not hard_.

_She put that bottle to her head and pulled the trigger  
__And finally drank away his memory  
__Life is short but this time it was bigger  
__Than the strength she had to get up off her knees  
__We found her with her face down in the pillow  
__Clinging to his picture for dear life  
__We laid her next to him beneath the willow  
__While the angels sang a whiskey lullaby_

Beast Boy and the others went in without knocking, as they'd done every Saturday for the past three years. The living room had no light, no life to it, and they figured she must still be in her room. They knocked, loud and hard, the way they had done when she lived at home in the tower. The lack of answer passed between them in a worried, tense vibe, and Robin kicked the locked door down.

Robin pulled the chain on a small dark lamp, his gloved hand brushing the gothic design as he lit the room. Beast Boy looked around, remembering the room that was pretty much the same as the one she had at Titans Tower, only different in the placement of the blackout drapes to hide the full-wall windows, the ever-familer mirror laying on the bedside table, which was washed with the faint pool of light. And in the middle of it, once white, now blood-red sheets and pillow encasing her body.

Raven was face-down, her note by her head, the one side of her face reflecting the serenity of sleep, the other done in by the bullet. Beast Boy took one look at her and fainted. Robin clutched Starfire as she read the note in her shaking voice, and they both broke down into complete and total hysterics.

They buried her that same afternoon in the pouring rain, laying her next to Cyborg in the shallow grave that could have been empty. _If only..._ Robin thought, longing for old times. He held Starfire, and the two of them began walking away. Beast Boy turned to follow suit, but heard a humming sound. Although he could not be sure, he thought it came from above him in the tree, female auto and male bass. Shaking off the feeling that Raven and Cyborg were just above him, he followed the others, and the muddy graves were left to an eternal time to reconisle the mistakes of two young teenagers.


	10. Shards of Me

_Raventhedarkgoddess: I don't own Shards of Me by Evanesence... ((Rae/Cy))_

**Shards of Me**

_I've been looking in the mirror for so long.  
That I've come to believe my souls on the other side.  
Oh the little pieces falling, shatter._

Raven Roth was alone in her room, alone again with her legs crossed, her eyes closed, and a mirror. A single mirror was laying at her side, so different from the kind of mirror a normal girl might have kept at her side for the occasional reaplication of her make-up, so intricatly patterened, that at times she could hardly bring herself to do anything but stare, stare into it for hours, stare at herself and wonder. _I wonder what kind of lies my face can tell me today._

Slowly, gradually, she heard the impulse in her head again. _Pick it up, just one little look, just a little more time to understand things in your own head, an escape from the real world... _Her eyes opened slightly and ran one finger over it, feeling the design, feeling the cold metal with her gray fingertips.

_I've been looking in the mirror so much lately... _Despite the thought, she picked it up anyway. Her reflection slowly came to face her, violet eyes full of longing, of long-controled emotions. The light caught her hair, showing just how pale she appered compared to it.

_My soul is close to me, so close... _One hand went to the surface, to the mirror, and held there, held against the glass of the girl in the mirror, the girl she knew and yet resented, the outward cold girl who no one could ever love.

_Don't think that way, just don't think, you're a worthwhile person... _But for some reason, the thought did not come as naturally as it should have been.

She could see the eyes on the other side, almost feel one of her sides coming forth. She considered retreating, considered falling into herself again, seeing her emotions, seeing the girls who she could be, the way she could be, emotional and unpredictable, not flat, montonus. _I wish I could be someone else, someone who could love, who could be there, who could actually be loved... I wish I could care..._

Raven felt herself falling throught the mirror against her will, yet also because it was her will, to be among her emotions.

"Heya, Rae!" One of her assorted sides called, and Raven knew without turning around that it was her happiness, the one thing she never dared to feel, had dared to feel only once, and it always was near it's twin, the two emotions that had escaped, had run free...

She turned slowly to find her happiness and her love, engaged in some childish game. She watched them running, running back and forth, and heard a laugh... _Why do I come in here? Why? Why do I tourture myself for the life I could have had? Why do I want to think about being a normal girl, not a half-demon? The past is in place. I can't change this kind of thing... _"Hello," she replyed quietly, seeing her more depressed self in the corner, who let out only a meek wave, as if afraid of everyone and everything around her.

Raven returned the meek wave and moved along, but the happiness was what stuck with her, the love... _How could I have felt those things so freely, so... effortlessly? What is wrong with me now? Why don't I just stay here, where my soul is?_

She could see her emotions, see how free they were. _What wouldn't I give not to be me, but a shard of me, falling, falling, shattered but free, release... _The thought was one of a suicidal person, but also that of a person who longed for freedom, who longed to be anywhere but where she stood...

Raven was suddenly back on her bed, one hand still on the mirror. _Why can't I just be one person instead of these falling, failing peices, these peices of me, these shards of me?_

_Shards of me,  
Too sharp to put back together.  
Too small to matter,  
But big enough to cut me into so many little pieces.  
If I try to touch her,  
And I bleed,  
I bleed,  
And I breathe,  
I breathe no more. _

"Rae Rae, dinner's done," Cyborg said in a sing-song voice through her cold, heavy metal door. She stood, rising slowly, but took one last look at the mirror, at the last way she could hang onto being a normal girl. _It contains a broken spirit, a spirit that is not only there, but inside of me, so cold, so very cold..._

"Coming, Cyborg." She couldn't stand him, couldn't stand his voice, couldnt' take only being his friend. He had seen the sides of her that were love and happiness, and he had shattered them further. _He made the peices too small to put back together, peices I thought were too small to matter..._

_If they didn't matter, _she challenged herself cruely, _then why do they cut you up? Why do you feel it, why, everyday, do you run, do you hide from him, do you like to look back on those times? You **miss **him, you know it. Just once, admit it, you were in love._

_I was **not in love, **_she insisted to herself, heading out of her room. "My emotions have always been under control," she lied to the darkness, and headed for the kitchen.

Dinner was nothing more than the usual confused mess: Beast Boy and Cyborg aruging, (meat, tofu, meat, tofu!) Starfire talking to Robin with adoration in her eyes, and Robin gazing at her adoringly. _Lovingly..._

_Get a grip, Raven, _she told herself, but it was no use. Her thoughts, her whole mind, was foucused, bringing itself back to the days when she had held onto Cyborg, held onto her life itself and clung, clung to happiness and the new meaning of hope as if she would not, **could **not let go.

"I'm going upstairs," she told her friends softly. Everyone, engadged in their activities, hardly noticed.

_I just need one more look... _Raven couldn't belive herself. _I don't need that life. I never did. I..._

_I what? I just want to look again. No harm, no harm at all..._

_Take a breath and I try to draw from my spirits well.  
Yet again you refuse to drink like a stubborn child.  
Lie to me,  
Convince me that I've been sick forever.  
And all of this,  
Will make sense when I get better.  
I know the difference,  
Between myself and my reflection.  
I just can't help but to wonder,  
Which of us do you love?_

Raven stood there, stood clad among her emotions as the only true person, and yet she felt as if they were the real ones, the ones that could be, the ones that could feel, that somehow, if it was within them to, made her feel alive, loved, allowed her to BE someone...

_This is just like some diease, that's what it is... I wish I could just get better... I wish this would make sense... _Her emotions, her sides, her broken memories... _I can't take this anymore._

She found herself laying on her bed again, her head covered in sweat, tears she regreated falling from her eyes. She heard several books fall off the shelf, and although she didn't turn around to look, she knew what

Raven exited the mirror with a new purpose: A way around, a way to forget. _What did he really love about me? He claimed I made him feel special... But as soon as I got myself back under control, stopped acting like a love-sick teenager and started acting like the person I have to be, the person he claimed was so important to him, he left me..._

_Who did he really love?_

_So I bleed,  
I bleed,  
And I breathe,  
I breathe now...  
Bleed,  
I bleed,  
And I breathe,  
I breathe,  
I breatheI breathe-  
I breathe no more._

"Rae?" Cyborg tried again, his hand connecting heavily, urgently, with the door. **_Why would she just come up to her room and leave us? Something is wrong here..._**

Failing to get further response, he opened the door, forced the door in, in time to see Raven laying across her bed, the blood dark around her ever-paling form, the hand shaking as she held the knife above herself, pulled from an open wound, her breath coming so, so slowly... "I'm sorry, Cyborg... Who did you really love, though, me or... her?..." She whispered, so quietly that had his senses not been painfully acute to the whole moment he might not have heard her.

"Rae... Rae, why would you... Who are you talking abo... What... happened?" He was stunned into speechlessness, standing in the doorway.

And suddenly, she breathed no more, hand fallen at her side, lips still open, full of those last few words. She was competly gone. Cyborg was left to stare after her, stare into the void that was now death.

Only when Robin forced him would he come away from her long enough for her to be buried. The funeral, private: No one needed to know how one of the Teen Titans had lost her life to herself.


	11. With You

_Raventhedarkgoddess: It's three in the moring, so if this sucks, that's why. ((Rae/Cy))_

**With You  **

_Standing on a bridge.  
Waiting in the dark.  
I thought that you'd be here by now.  
There's nothing but the rain.  
No footsteps on the ground.  
I'm listening but there's no sound.  
Isn't anyone trying to find me?  
Won't somebody come take me home?_

She was all alone. Her hair blew, her eyes stung, and the violet rain beat into her frail body, the figure hunched slightly against the wind, but still standing tall, almost uncaringly. She was unsure of what had possessed her to come out onto this rotting wooden bridge over the river so late at night, so far from the city and away from help, but she refused to turn away as the river churned below her like mad and the storm raged at her, furious that it had not intiminated this frail creature into hiding as it had the city inhabinats into staying inside. She clutched to the splintering rail for dear life: What was left of her once dear life, anyway.

The rotting wood was sharper than she had anticipated, sharp from lover's hands and vandel's kicks as they stood in the spot where she now bask in her numbness, yet she didn't feel the splinters entering her grey hands. She barely even began to notice it as it trailed down, beating it's own rythem with the rain, indifferent yet exactly the same from it's crystal clearness. The dark around her was pulling, moving, and unwelcomly pulling on her, dragging her down, pulling her into itself. It covered her like a blanket: A heavy black blanket that had fallen over her forever, weighing down her shoulders, making it impossible to see anything but her hands in front of her face.

The dark had been her friend, at first. She'd wallowed in it when no one else understood. She'd taken comfort in the dark, unwelcomed, unloved, and unwanted by most people, as was she, and so she had kept it close at hand, ready to run back, ready to sink into it and leave herself there forever if no one would have her. But then she had met the Teen Titans, her teammates, and had begun to shed the dark ever so slightly, and regain control of her life. But now she was blanketed, held by the dark again, and held friend only to the dark. She cursed the dark at that point, though, cursed the night, cursed the bridge she stood on, and cursed her friends for breaking up. _It's all my fault_, Raven thought numbly, the first real thought since this hellish nightmare had begun.

The blood on her grey skin looked natural soaked in blood for only a second, but even after she did nothing to stop it. She allowed herself to become caught up in the intrecate pattern of wood, crimison blood, and grey flesh that was her hand. She was not replused by the sight of what she was becoming as most people would have been: The only feelings that crept through her body were saddness, regret, and hopelessness, along with the sensation of being lost. Lost to herself, lost to the people she was closest to, and lost to anyone who could have helped her.

Lost to everything that ever mattered.

The bleeding slowed. She didn't want the torrent of guilt, the thoughts, and the pain that would follow her from the home she was running from. She didn't want to remember Titan's Tower, or her room, or all the times she had sat on the couch next to her friends, warm and safe, hands on her shoulders and words in her ears, reassurence. She wanted this to be her forgetting place, her dying place. _I can die now, alone, friendless, cold... _She looked around once more, longing for the comfort her friends had given her. Her eyes caught only the cold rain, falling all around her, and her ears heard it, alternating with the water below the bridge, and then the water began to drip down her face, salty and unlike the rain water...

There was a crash, a redundant crash, and a tree fell at the bridge's base, glowing black, and it reminded her why she couldn't cry. Her father, her emotions, her link to him, her mirror, her friends... Part of her didn't want to cry, but the other half wanted to bawl and let go of all the pain still inside her head. _It's all his fault. I can't love, I can't cry, I can't do anything a NORMAL person could do... _Suddenly, the controlled girl who was the mask Raven wore, the lie she lived, came out and pulled the tears back, kept the emotions inside. Raven resented her, yet she also knew she needed to regain herself. But with the control came the feeling, the grief, and the pain, which only made it all harder to contain. Somehow, though, she felt the control wash over her.

She sat down, directly in the middle of the rotting wood, listening hard for something she wanted to hear more than anything else in the world. The rain hit the exposed part of her neck as she leaned forward, but Raven either faked ignorence or truely was ignoring it, because her face remained set, her shoulders squared under her cloak despite the rain coming through the thin material. Settling down further in the bridge, she knew something in her was giving up. Her violet hair was plastered to her head in a messy pattern by the wind and rain, but she couldn't bring herself to brush it away from her eyes. All that mattered right now was listening: Listening for the footfall of one of the friends she wasn't even sure she had anymore.

She found herself straining, wanting to hear something, wanting to belive in something or someone that wasn't coming, wasn't true. Even she didn't know what she was wishing for. _Everyone's gone, no one's coming for you_, she snapped at herself, although she was still straining, still fighting, still listening, almost hating herself for this foolish wishing and dreaming all the while. _Why? _The empty question bounced inside Raven's skull, forcing Raven to hear it a thousand times, but reciving no answer to the endless echo. _Why?_

_Cyborg... _She was unsure of why, but his was the first face to surface from the sea of painful memories, and the first to hold her. His human eye seemed to sparkle, and the offhand way she last remembered him talking to her, the lovingness behind it as he stared at his girlfriend, was almost too much for Raven. She pulled her head down, the rain attacking the back of her neck worse than ever. _I loved him. Why does it have to be this way? Does anyone even miss me? Do they know I'm gone? Or do they think I'm being antisocial me, locked in my room, ignoring them, packing, getting ready to leave them?_

The only answering sound was the rain and the clap of thunder, the light of the lightining flashing as breifly as the light in her life had, both pitching her into total darkness. She realized what she wanted to hear all of a sudden: She wanted to hear someone coming for her. _Isn't anyone coming for me? Won't somebody come take me home? _Another clap of thunder was her reply.

_**It's a damn cold night.  
Trying to figure out this life.  
Won't you take me by the hand  
take me somewhere new?  
I don't know who you are.  
But I, I'm with you.  
I'm with you.**_

Raven ran one hand over the back of her neck, wiping away a few drops of icy rain. Parionid, feeling something was watching her, she spun around, the cold feeling of eyes bothering her as she turned slowly, trying desperatly to see if anyone was there, if anyone could show her the world again, if anyone could pull her from the dark. No one and nothing was there. Raven thought about trying to stand back up, but her legs and her mind saw no reason to stand back up.

The cool air slipped under, past the buldge of the hood of her cloak, chilling her and yet remaining completely unbothersome. Instead, she looked at her comunicator under her cloak, a memory of Cyborg, of Robin and Starfire, of Beast Boy, of her warm room, of Slade and Terra and everything that was her world... It served as a memory, a dark and terrible memory of the happiness and the smiles, the laughs and the warm rides in the T-car, fighting beside Cyborg, meditating with Starfire, healing Robin's arm, throwing Beast Boy into a wall, talking in Terra's room... Without warning, the comunicator was thrown across the bridge, shattered with her mind.

The possessed strenght and feeling gone, Raven could hardly hold her own head up off the ground, and did so with amazing difficulty. The rain pounded, poured, bit into her still, but even the will to care was gone. _The will to care has been gone for a long time, _said a voice in her mind. _I never did care, _she tried to tell it, but the will to lie outright to herself, to pretend she was an emotionless immortal, was long gone, like the raindrops that had been falling when she'd first run, terrified and upset, out of the tower were gone, soaked into the ground, as passing as the life of a person, endless in their coming.

The chill returned to her slowly, creeping, as if more eyes had come upon her, but she did not turn around this time. _Why does it have to be so damn cold...? _She pulled the cloak to herself and brought a corner of it to her eye, hoping to wipe away the tears before they began again, the tears of hell's angel, finding heaven for a second only to be dropped by her God itself, now too broken and alone to go back where she had come from.

"Raven's gone," Cyborg called from the long hallway, into the various open doors of the people he had thought were his friends, the people he had never thought would abandon him like this, his voice laced with an edge of panic.

Robin came to the doorway to stand next to his friend, kicking the box he was kicking with hate and spite. "If she's gone, she's probably already left to try to get her life back. She's got powers: She can pack quicker than anyone. I would forget her if I were you, because this fight obviously means everything, everyone we loved and lived for is over. Raven's probably gone on." The leader's voice was gentle, smooth: The voice of a best friend who knew he was losing all of his friends in the same night, in the same way, and knowing it was his fault they had fought, they had hurt one another, and they they stood only an hour away from last goodbyes.

"All her stuff is still here," Cyborg protested, still not satisfied with Robin's answer or willing to forget about Raven, not until he knew where she was for sure.

Beast Boy's hand rested on an old monkey that he remembered from another time. _Help me, help me, help me count, _Beast Boy thought to himself, seeing the look of murder on Raven's face, seeing her face's anger and relif, her threats, and her life's legacy in one long look. "Maybe she didnt' want to be reminded of us..." He yelled to Cyborg as he threw the monkey in the box with the clothes off his messy floor, ignoring the peice of ceiling tile that Starfire had blasted down on his head earlier as he strived to pull his clothing out of their heaps and make sense of what he was and wasn't taking. "She could have just left everything!" _But why would she leave her mirror? Her stuff was important to her... Wasn't it?_ Beast Boy was completely confused. _We were important to her too and she's not taking us... At least I thought we were important to her... And if I feel like this, then what about Cy?_

"I'm gonna go out for a little bit," Cyborg said quietly. _If anyone cares_, he thought. _Which they don't. _He listened to the door lock securly behind himself as he went out. He made a quick decision: He would go into the woods and check Raven's favorite haunts, every place he'd ever been with her. His feet splashed the puddles, his face took most of the rain, and he ran quickly past what could possibly have led him to Raven: Her footprints in the soft mud, full of water, leading to the dark bridge and the answer to his life.

"I'm sick of thinking," Raven said aloud to the darkness, feeling the finalness of it all. She reached under her cloak, hoping to find something, something he could hold on to, something that would bring back the reason and logic of life and permit her to leave, to awaken from the darkness that had taken her heart over. Instead, she brought herself to look down, through the thin wooden slats in the bridge, at the rotting wooden rail, and thought about how easy, how **painless **it would be just to allow herself to jump into the churning water.

She wasn't certain what it was about being here, about being alone again, but it was making her judgement impaired highly. She thought of Cyborg, but this thought brought no comfort, only empty pain, anger, and rage at the thought that she would never see him again. _Maybe I don't want to die_, she thought, but the two sides of her mind were muddled with this conflict so that her decision quickly became just to sit there and try to figure things out. "I just want to get away," she whispered to the falling rain. "Someone come take me home."

The words were out. She, Raven, who had trusted no one, wanted to be held and led back to the home she was fully aware she no longer had.

_**I'm looking for a place.  
And searching for a face.  
Is anybody here I know?  
Cause nothing's going right.  
And everything a mess.  
And no one likes to be alone.  
Isn't anyone trying to find me?  
Won't somebody come take me home?**_

"Raven!" Cyborg called into the empty night. "RAVEN!" He had been everywhere, from one end to the other, but he hadn't seen Raven, hadn't seen any sign of anyone, just wind and rain and emptyness in his own heart. The expansive silence was his only compainion as he moved.

"Raven." He whispered the name this time, the will-power and his own voice taken by the wind, the sound broken, frail, and quiet, his hands balled into fists at his sides. The underbrush smacked his legs, his feet slipping as he fought forward.

"Raven! Raven, come on! Where are you?" There was thin path, very narrow, where a person could have gone, the underbrush bent back slightly. _Raven. _Cyborg set off at a run, slipping and sliding, for what he hoped would end this hellish nightmare.

"Is someone out there?" Raven's voice was little more than crazy rambling now, but she didn't care. _No one's around to care_, she thought. _I just wish one of my friends would... I just need someone right now... Isn't there any place left in the world I can go, any place left for me? _Then her friend's faces burned back into her head, and she knew there was no way to find another place she truely belonged: She had just been in one, and everyone there couldn't possibly stop hating each other after the fight_. What was it even about? It left me alone, and for what? My friends... _She remembered there last laugh together, smiling at a joke Cyborg had made, Starfire confused but laughing just to be a part of the laughter...

No one would find her here. No one would know, no one would care. No one knew her face anyway. Short of the people she had been close to, no one knew her name, no one knew anything about her. If she were found dead, only four people would be able to idenify her. And would those four people care? Would four hearts contract in loss? Would the brains go into denial, shock? Or would they just think, "She's not someone I know or care about anyway." Would they even **remember **her? Or would they think she was every bit of the cold bitch she pretended, ignoring them, leaving her things and starting a new life they were not involved in? Maybe no one would find her, and her body would rot in that icy, cold water, cold as the night itself...

"I'm not like that," she whispered out loud. The rain kept to it's answer in a steady, annoying rythem, that never changed and never gave a furfilling answer.

_Everything is such a mess... _She saw them again, eating, laughing, until Robin and Beast Boy had started. A petty fight, worthy of no one's notice, until Robin lost his temper. He swung at Beast Boy. Raven saw again, saw Starfire involve herself in the struggle, pulling Robin away. Beast Boy had become angry and one of his blows hit Raven. Cyborg pulled her back, off to the side, holding onto her, but watching her friends, something inside her snapped. _She had run from the tower..._

Every scowl, every cruel word, came back, hard and fast, every time when she'd wanted to be alone, every time she'd stormed off to be alone... _I don't want to be alone now, _she thought. _I don't ever want to be alone again. I never want to be so, so alone, so hurt... _"I just want to go home."

Cyborg's search was begining to feel vain, foolish, as he ran along the path. _This could be a deer trail for all I know. _Suddenly, the woods opened up, and an old bridge loomed ahead of him. The decaying wood was holding up quite well, from what he could tell. But the part that he was interested in was out in the middle: A girl, blue cloak flying in the wind, sitting cross-legged, purple hair plastered to her forehead.

He ran toward her.

_**It's a damn cold night.  
Trying to figure out this life.  
Won't you take me by the hand  
Take me somewhere new?  
I don't know who you are but I  
I'm with you.  
I'm with you.** _

**Why is everything so confusing?  
Maybe I'm just out of my mind.  
It's a damn cold night.  
Trying to figure out this life.  
Won't you take me by the hand,  
Take me somewhere new?  
I don't know who you are but I  
I'm with you.  
I'm with you.**

She was slumped there, slumped by the wreckage of her comunicatior, so alone, so forgotten, that Cyborg quickened his pace, now a full-out, hapazard run to her side. That was when he noticed the water clinging to her cheeks wasn't just rain: It was teardrops.

The tears were hot, fast tears, and Raven didn't care. She couldn't contain them anymore, and there was nothing out here she couldn't destroy. She could destroy the bridge benieth her, fall through into the water. It didn't matter: Nothing did. She was so intent that she missed the sound she'd been hoping to hear: Cyborg's footfall.

Cyborg leaned down to Raven, not even bothering to say her name, tears falling from his own eyes as he scooped her up in his arms. "Are you okay, Rae?" He managed finally. He stared at her, at the cuts, at the blood, at the endlessness of her hurt, and knew Raven had been trying to forget, had been condeplating a way to end it all. _I'm not going to let her give up_, he thought. _I need her._

"Cyborg?" She was confused, dazed, holding onto him, and he set her down, allowing for her to lean on him, holding her. "Cyborg... Why did you come after me?" She paused. "No one even cared when I ran out. Why did you come? I was going to die... I almost died here..." The tears fell faster, loud explosions being heard.

"Raven, I thought you understood that I love you. Come on, let's go home." Both of them started for the home they weren't sure if they had, but even the broken home couldn't harm them. They were together now. Maybe the others would come back, maybe they wouldn't. Cyborg kissed Raven's lips gently, carefully.

_I don't know who you are, not really, _Raven thought, _but I'm still with you._


	12. It's Not Easy

_Don't own Five for Fighting's song It's Not Easy ((Mild Rae/Cy))_

**It's Not Easy**

"Raven!"

Her name carried on the wind, twisting around them where they stood, high above the ground, high above the buildings and people below them. Raven wheeled around from where she was redoubling, ready to take another stab at the criminal. Robin apparently did not want her to face him, however, for he pointed off the edge of the building, wanting her to follow the way his green-gloved hand was pointing. "Raven, that girl is falling!"

The others were fighting, fighting hard, to surround Mumbo, to keep him in one place. "You're going back to jail where you belong!" Cyborg proclaimed, the side of him that was not robot, the human side of his face, covered, drowning in sweat. That poor little girl... He thought to himself, trying to let nothing show as he battled on, feeling Beast Boy swoop past him, seeing Starfire come around beside him, unable to reach the girl in time.

"I told you I would let her fall..." Mumbo taunted, his mouth open, a swarm of birds flying from his immense hat. His laughter was anything but ordinary as it spread over the rooftop of the bank: It was sick, cruel, and tantalizing, and Cyborg landed a blow, unable to take anymore.

Raven, however, refused to observe any of this, her eyes trained on the girl, hardly eight, falling, the bank-keeper's daughter... Suddenly her leg muscles pulsed, her body shot straight out, her arms in front of her, and she was flying in a way that almost reminded onlookers of a Superman pose from the comics they had devoured as children.

"Azarath, Metrion, ZINTHOS!" The last word was caked with an urgent sense, a sense that Raven only put in her voice when she was feeling something, feeling something against her will, wanting nothing than pure emotion to help her save the day. A black claw shot out, attempting to grab the girl, to pull her in... Raven's face quickly became a mask, trying not to let onto anything, not the panic she felt or the things that were going on in her head... _Come ON... _She flew lower, fighting with herself to catch the tiny blonde girl.

She heard the little girl scream and try to move from the black claw: Raven groaned inwardly. "I just want to help you," she shouted above the wind. The fall seemed to be slowing, but Raven couldn't stop the girl, couldn't save her now. _Come ON..._

A sick noise split the air, and Raven shut her eyes, pulling down, and looked at the little girl laying on the ground. She could hear Robin yelling something, but didn't respond. She mearly pulled her hood tighter to her face and flew up, away from the mess, away from the little girl.

Away from the sobbing noises emited from the throat of another person she had failed to save.

_**I can't stand to fly.  
I'm not that naive.  
I'm just out to find the better part of me.  
I'm more than a bird.  
I'm more than a plane.  
I'm more than some pretty face beside a train.  
And it's not easy to be me.**_

"Friend Raven had been in her own room for quite some time now, friend Robin. Perhaps we should go upstairs and speak with her to ease her 'depression'?" Starfire looked at Robin, her eyes glowing with an easy friendship and means. "I understand that the news of the girl's broken back must have shocked her, but surely we can..."

"Let her alone, man," Cyborg cut in. "She thinks she's guilty, and I say we just let her alone until she realizes she's not." The half-robot was turned away from them, his face set on gazing out the window, trying not to think of Raven's face when she had heard the news.

_"It's not your fault. It's Mumbo's. She might walk again, Rae. You tried," he heard himself say again in his head._

_"What kind of a hero can't even save a little girl from living a shadowed life?" He heard her ask again. Her face was nothing but a perfectly conformed mask, the tears and anger and rage just under the surface, clouding her entire voice. The door slammed in front of her face, and Cyborg had been left alone..._

_That was two days ago, _he said to himself. _I hope she's all right... _Outside of the few dishes she left in the sink each night, no one had seen any traces of her. "Cyborg's right," Robin said, jumping him back to the present. "Raven just has to make up her mind for herself that everything is all right and she can keep fighting."

"Are you sure we can't help her?" Beast Boy asked, his hands clutching the controler slightly harder than he should have. He thought about Raven, never cheerful, but never one to fall into herself... _It just doesn't feel right, _said the voice in his head, and he agreed quietly.

"No. Just leave her alone." Robin looked out the window, trying to see what Cyborg saw as snowflakes began to fall. However, he knew that they were both seeing two different things: Two different visons of depression at having lost the same teammate.

Raven Roth was laying across her bed, staring out at the falling snow. There had already been alarms she had failed to respond to. She stretched her arms out above her head and quickly dropped them: Anything to keep from thinking about flying. _I can't stand to think about flying anymore... _

She could hear the others below her. _They've got to think I'm the world's biggest idiot, locking myself up like this, but... _She looked over at herself in the mirror, at the face that had once been proclaimed 'City Hero'. _They don't even know what a hero is... If they could see me, they'd run the hell away..._

She saw that her eyes were heavier than ever, from lack of sleep and mediation, and that her hair was tangled, her cloak torn from catching on the edge of her bed. _What do I care? Hero... What a word... _She saw the fall again, saw herself trying, trying so hard to save a life and failing... _Heros are supposed to protect. That was... That wasn't protection at all... I as good as killed her..._

"Rae... Rae, Could you come out her for a second?" Cyborg's voice was gentle, calling her out of her room. "I just want to ask you something..."

"I really don't want to talk right now," she called back. _Is that really my voice? _The edges were as hard as ever, but something inside her throat caught and held, erasing some of the lifelessness and putting sadness she could never afford to hear into her voice.

"Please, Rae? Even you must need to talk through something like this..." _I just want to keep you from hating yourself._

The door swung open and Raven stepped out. _I don't want to be alone, _she thought. "All right," she said lifelessly. Her voice, however, still didn't feel like her own.

_**I wish that I could cry  
Fall upon my knees.  
Find a way to lie  
About a home I've never seen.  
It may sound absurd...but don't be naive  
Even heroes have the right to bleed  
I may be disturbed...but won't you concede?  
Even heroes have the right to dream  
It's not easy to be me. **_

_**Up, up and away...away from me  
It's all right...you can all sleep sound tonight  
I'm not crazy...or anything...**_

"Cyborg, I really don't want to be out here..." Raven looked at him with her eyes enlarged by the evergreen tree behind them in the snow. "It's freezing, and... And I don't think I'm going to stay with the team much longer." She looked at him, and he could feel the pain brimming under the surface. _I can't let him know that... Why did I tell him that?_

"You're going to give up everything and everyone who needs you just because you made one mistake?" Cyborg asked incrediously. "Things happen, Raven, and it wasn't your fault."

"No... There's more to it than that. Cyborg, how can a hero, a protector and a ruler, mess up? We're supposed to be... I don't know. Immortal, perfect... Super." She sighed and looked away, a single snowflake landing on her face and chilling her despite her hood. "I can't explain it..."

"I'm not going to make you try," he said softly to her. "But you should know that it's never going to get any better if you stay locked up, as if you've lost your sanity and everyone and everything you ever cared about."

"Do you know what it feels like to have to sit there, meditating to keep your thoughts in, when all you want to do is fall on yourself and cry for the kind of life you could have had?" She fixed him with a look that could not be defined as hateful, it was truely more of a thoughtful, complasive look. "Do you?" The emotional edge cursed her voice again, but it was impossible to force away.

"No."

"That's how it is for me now. I can't interact with other people... I've been spending hours on meditation, just to hold in it, and... I just don't feel like playing the hero anymore when I live my life hiding in the shadows with things in my heart that will never leave me, just because of how I was born." Raven paused for a breath, trying to figure out how best to word her problems. _I just need someone to care..._

Cyborg didn't say anything. Instead, he tapped his own chest once and looked into Raven's eyes. "You're not the only one who's only on this team because of the way they are. You're not the only one who socity thinks a monster..." He sighed openly. "I've felt that way before too, you know, like I can't do anything right."

"Cyborg... I'm sorry, I must sound so..."

He just shook his head weakly, as though not really in protest but as if he wished she wouldn't apoligize. "Rae... Just don't feel alone. We're all in this togther, and we all play the oppressed most of the time. But... Even heros have the right to bleed."

"It's just... It's... Cyborg..."A single second passed between them where her eyes because clouded with... Was it pain, or was it mearly emotions, emotions that the world hoped never to have to see there? He couldn't tell, but by the time his human eye blinked back his own pain, they were gone, and Raven was herself again, hard, cold, and depressed, standing with her back to the growing snowdrifts.

"I just feel insane..." She whispered finally, as if gaining control over her tounge to speak. "I'm just another disturbed freak..."

"Rae..." He exhaled the breath he's been holding softly, because he knew not what to say to her words. "I promise, it'll be okay...

_**I can't stand to fly  
I'm not that naive  
Men weren't meant to ride  
With clouds between their knees**_

_**I'm only a man in a silly red sheet  
Digging for kryptonite on this one way street  
Only a man in a funny red sheet  
Looking for special things inside of me  
Inside of me  
Inside me  
Inside of me**_

"You'll be okay... It doesn't matter how you feel now," he whispered, taking her hand, although it escaped the notice of both of them for quite some time. Finally he called it to her attention by breaking them apart, her cloak whipping back in the wind.

"Yes it does. If I don't stop feeling things, if I can't just act like a hero without thoughts and feelings, then I have no powers and I'm even less of a hero than I am now." She rubbed the hand he had released subconsiously, trying to bring back any warmth he may have permitted to linger there. "Why were we even born? Why does the media think of heros as... As super humans...?"

"I don't know, Rae. I really don't. All I know is that heros weren't meant to fly. No one was meant to ride the clouds. Least of all someone who never asked for that kind of life at all." He sighed, looking away. "We can't help the way we're born, but if I hadn't been in that damned accident... Sometimes I wish I'd died! Then I wouldn't have to protect people from danger or act like some fly-boy hero in costume!" His fist pounded a nearby tree, and Raven took a step closer to him, preventing him from slamming the tree and damaging it further.

"Stop that, Cyborg."

"I'm sorry, Rae... I really am." It's just so hard to think about... About guys like Robin, who just wanted this life, and then people like us, who can't be among normal people because of how we look, how we act, how we are inside..."

"No, Cyborg. You're a normal guy inside, and you know that as well as I do... It was stupid of me to think I could just run away." She sighed. "Being like this... It's not something we can run away from, no matter how many times we fail, is it?"

"No, we've just got to keep fighting... Even though the fight isn't worth anything..." He sighed and smiled at her, if only for a breif moment. "I'm just glad you're not going to leave us now... I don't think anyone could have saved me if you had."

"No. I would still be in my room if it weren't for you." She moved closer to him and he hugged her, so that both of them were involentarally involved in a display of affection. "I almost forgot that to be a hero, you have to... You have to know that it's all just a joke, that you're still a human, regardless... Even though I'm not a human."

"Rae... I don't know what to say. I never knew you felt that bad..." He moved closer to her, his eyes closing, and she closed hers too... Suddenly, they weren't heros and they weren't socitiy's freaks anymore: They were two normally teenagers who knew what everyone knew, if not justa little bit better; Life was not easy.

_**I'm only a man  
In a funny red sheet  
I'm only a man  
Looking for a dream**_

_**I'm only a man  
In a funny red sheet  
And it's not easy  
Its not easy to be me.**_

"Where were you two!" Robin demanded. "We were worried, and then when Raven was gone... Raven!" He saw her standing there next to Cyborg, and her apperence startled him: She no longer looked disheartened or upset, although she did have a rather thoughtful apperence on her face, looking quietly around the room.

"I'm sorry if we worried anyone," she muttered. "No need to act like a mother hen, though." She moved through the room.

"Is she okay?" Robin asked Cyborg, watching her go.

"She'll be fine, man." He ran his hand over the side of his face quietly and quickly, trying to avoid the strange looks of the others. "She's just another broken hero," he added with a whisper.

Upstairs in her room, Raven did not move or speak: Instead, she was still, gazing out the window, her knees drawn against her body to chase the memories away, memories of battles and fights, of the falling girl and Cyborg's words... _Heros are just lies in fly-boy costumes, Rae..._

"So a hero really doesn't have the right to dream anymore than an animal." She ran her hand along the side of her face, remembering Cyborg and walking with him, talking over what it truly meant to be a hero. For no reason, she leaned over and grabbed a peice of paper: She knew what she was going to do.

**Hero  
**_Raven Roth_

_A hero flys above the trees  
The secrets kept residing on the heart.  
Memories of forgotten dreams  
to keep them from falling apart. _

_Wearing another costume traid  
Protecting the identiy they no longer possess.  
Too much of a freak to actually be wanted  
But with nowhere to go it's a hassle to confess. _

_And somehow now they hold those dreams  
Although the peices remain in their arms still.  
With the cry of how uneasy life is,  
They move on with a sheer unindulged will. _

_I'm nothing but a shadow hero.  
Who's remembered until she falls.  
But it's never easy to be me.  
And no one would hear me if I should call._

She folded the paper: Released feelings that could fly away. Maybe in time...

_Someday. _She thought. _Someday it will all just fly away... And it might be easy to be me._


	13. If Heaven Were a Mile Away

_Raventhedarkgoddess: No lyrics, just a poem between segments, which happens to be mine.((Rae/Rob))_

**If Heaven Were A Mile Away**

_**Walking down the empty lane.  
Eyes cast over and clouded with pain.  
I know I should be locked up with the key thrown away,  
but no one cares enough, and I'm alone today.** _

Robin didn't really understand everything that was going on in his head, or in his heart as he walked down the street, patroling it as if just by being there, he could keep it safe. Not that he really believed that he could. Guys like me don't keep anything or anyone safe, he thought sadly to himself. A nearby beer can seemed to be the ideal thing to vent his anger on, and he kicked it, listening to it clatter away into the night, the only sound to be heard for miles around: This was a night for silence.

The rooftops stretched out before him: An endless lane, a place for him to walk, alone in his solitude. He knew what he must look like: Every girl's dream, a gallent night in shining armor who cared not for his own life but for the lives of the people. _One thing's true, _he thought bitterlly. _I don't care about my own life. _The can clattered away from him off the rooftop and he watched it fall, moving slowly, closer and closer to all of the pavement, and then...

The aluminum made a mysterious noise as it fell, hitting the concrete wonder of a street with a soft thud. Robin ignored how it had fallen, falling quickly and quietly with no one to stop it, nothing to prevent it's fall. He thought not of himself but of Raven: If she was upset, he never knew. Maybe she was plunging too, not off of a building but in a less drastic way, into herself, into a locked room that was her soul from which she would never rise again. Robin hugged his arms around himself: Part of him did not want to believe he was out here, shivering and thinking about her, not so soon after his break-up with Starfire.

_Give it up. _He used the words as a harsh mental slap. _Give it up. _The words truly didn't do much for him: Instead, they seemed to dig deeper into his mind, imprinting the determination instead of erasing it. He couldn't help it, the thoughts were natural, as natural as drawing breath from the air, although sometimes he needed to remind himself to do that as well sometimes, especially now, with the world around him so bizzare, so different from everything he'd known before.

He couldn't believe himself, pathetic, looking around for someone to care about him. The mystery of what he was doing on the roof seemd solved, but really even he wasn't sure what he thought he was doing there. Instead,he looked up into the clouds, small and alone. _Could anything really exist in a world as barron and forgotten as space? _He didn't know why he thought about that, and honestly couldn't care less.

_Maybe something up there could care about a person like me, _he found himself thinking.

_**I can't seem to figure out what I'm doing here.  
And I know there's something living up there in the sky.  
But do I really want to go there with them.  
Maybe someone would hold me if I were to cry.**_

Raven Roth was on patrol too, in her own part of the city, away from Robin, away from the Tower, his face burning into her mind to the point of being painful. His black hair had fallen around his face, and his eyes... Even though she couldn't see them, she knew he studied her. She had tried to force him from her mind, but he remained, lingered, his eyes on her as intently in her memory as in real life.

She looked to the clouds and removed her hood: A strange enchantress, a bizzare looking girl, almost a woman, really, purple hair blowing in the wind around her, whipping into her face in spite of it's lack of lenght. "Wonderful night," she whispered to herself, shielding her body with arms, protecting herself from the world around her. Her cloak wrapped itself around her legs in the wind,and she sighed softly, looking around before decending quietly to the street below.

The moon caught her violet eyes and she caught sight of her own reflection. Was that fear, pain, or some other long-forgotten emotion in her eyes? _Calm down, no losing control, not now, not ever again... Never. _The look disappered from her eyes, but she knew she would need to go home soon, to hide in the prision of her room and meditate. _An activity that captivates and holds me in it's lie..._

"What am I even doing here?" She continued to gaze in the mirror, until the peices suddenly became black, and her reflection disappered momentarilly. The glass shattered, and there was her own face: Or at least the shards of it, gazing back at her as if showing her the interior peices of her soul, such a hopeless puzzle of fragle fragments that it would never go back together. Meditation was her excuse, and she hid in her lie.

_What am I doing here? _She asked again, but silently, because even another word out loud could cause her more pain than ever. She flung her hood back up and made the slow, painful movements: Left foot, right foot, left foot again, moving slowly but carefully, avoiding moving fast or making any sudden movements. _Anything to feel the motony of life._

She could feel eyes on her, in her back from a nearby window, and she jerked her hood back around her face, hiding her from whoever or whatever might watch her, might try to see why she was so upset. No one cares if I keep standing here or not, she thought to herself.

_And no one would notice if I started to cry._

_**So now I run into someone I thought I knew.  
The dark seems to take us both up and into the night.  
And I don't know what I can't really understand.  
I let the unknown take my hand to combat the fright.**  
_

Robin moved over the roofs, further and further into the heart of the dark city, his eyes burning as the wind hit them. This was a desolent part of the city: Here the roofs moved further and further away from each other, and he was forced to give a cat-like leap, hands out in front of him whilehis leg muscles stretched behind, landing in a sleth, ninja-like position.

A peice of glass forced itself into his hands and he looked over: The window was cracked perfectly, neatly, as if someone had done it in rage or fury, as if they had a reason for causing the kind of destruction they did. The graffiti seemed to show itself as another form of expression, an expression of sadness, and it was here in the slums that the emotional, the forgotten, would have felt together for the first time in years.

_But I'm not like that. _He stared at his reflection in the broken shards before shaking it off and moving on. _I'll never be like that. I'm a good person, and I don't need anyone else... I'll never need anyone else. I just have a duty to the people of this city, that's all._

The dark around him danced with his thoughts, trying to prove him wrong, a broken streetlight nearby adding to the ominous air of the city. The mask pressed in on his face, but he hardly seemed to notice. His face was hiding something, or maybe everything, about him. _I have a normal life. I am a normal person, despite being a hero... I'm not lonely. _There she was again, Raven, looking at him in his mind.

_I don't need Raven. I don't need Starfire. I don't need girls to make me happy. _This was his chant, his own private chant in his head, the very thing that would keep him sane in the coming months, or so he thought. He was so preoccupied with the pain of his memory,the very memory of being dumped he was outside fighting against,that he didn't see the dark figure in a blue cloak until he slammed into her.

"Freeze!" It was not panic in her voice, but an order. "Stay put and don't mo... Robin!" The recongintion came into her voice suddenly, and she dropped her hand. "Are you okay?" The hood fell away from her face, and none other than Raven looked back at him, her eyes shining in the moonlight, fixing themselves on the glass behind him rather than on his face.

"Yeah... Sorry I ran into you." Suddenly, the darkness that had once scared him was for the better, because he could feel his own face growing hot. However, he noted she was still looking behind him. _Do I really disinterest her that much? _"Who do you think did that, anyway?"

Raven mumbled something quietly, and he had to move his head closer to hear her. She felt her nerves give a slight jump, but did her best to ignore it. _Stay calm, always calm. _"Could you repeat that?"

"I said... Me." She looked over at him, his face so close to hers, and now her eyes did not avert him, but stuck to his mask like glue. "I didn't mean to, so don't think that's how I am." Whatever had possessed her to say that, she began to wish she could learn to keep her mouth shut.

"I never thought you actually meant anything by it..." He stopped, sensing that she wanted nothing to do with him or his taunting, lowlife way of speaking. "I mean, it's just your mind, right? You were just thinking too hard, and..." He trailed off yet again, finding himself to be harsh and stupid once again. _Here you are, your only moment with her, and you go and wreck it... She looks scared, and yet you can't even comfort her. Some hero. Some hero, _he repeated to himself, noticing how she looked away from him, her eyes on the sky.

"You're not supposed to be out patroling," he said by way of having something else to say. This earned him a look straight in his eyes: Often enough he had wondered himself if Raven could see through his mask into the pain he wore so obviously behind it.She continued to move and he was forced to follow: Despite how unusual her position was, she was handling the way she was walking with unusual grace. Suddenly, watching her instead of his own two feet, he managed to trip and stagger forward.

Her body was forward in a flash, catching his, and his head fell against her chest neatly: She couldn't help wondering why she felt so happy to be holding him and tried to let go, but a part of her wanted to keep him there. His hand held hers to steady himself.

They stayed like that for a few moments, grey skin on green glove, both protecting hands with something to hide. _Always something to hide, _they both thought, although it was beyond their basic understanding why they would have the same thought, and then their eyes locked.

**_I'm asking you what it means to be here.  
As time hangs through the stars around.  
And every breath I take here is unreal.  
Happiness with wings knows not the ground._**

"Are you all right?" She asked him finally, quizically, and he backed away from her, embarressed with how long he had stood there, comfortable and warm, against her, his heart racing, hers a steady thump he had never expected to be able to hear. "I didn't mean to catch you quite like that, it just kind of happened..." She shifted uncomfortably, and only then did he notice that the hand that held his own bled slightly.

"How did you do that?" Before she could protest or move away, he held out her hand, seeing the glass shard in it. "Did you punch at the window or something?" Robin couldn't believe himself. _She didn't go out for a walk tonight to be bothered by you, _he reminded himself. "I just want to help you. I mean, if you're upset, we can talk..."

She jerked away from him. "It's nothing, Robin. Glass is glass. I'll remove it when we get home. Unless you have something you'd like to talk about with me first." _Please say yes, please don't think I'm cold, I'm not like this, I promise... _She blinked, hardly able to keep the pain from her own eyes. "After all, I've never run into you out here before."

"Uh... Yeah, let's talk." He took a seat on the edge of the sidewalk, it's cold edging digging into his back, and she followed suit, leaning against a cast-iron lamp post, which dug into her back slightly but was ignored. She looked majestic standing there, a queen with no kingdom, a solder or a magican of mideval lore who had lost their luster and shine, a servent to someone or something bigger and better than she thought she could ever be. He noticed how she studied the moon and stars. "Do you think there could really be something up there, like life?"

"Well, everything had to come from somewhere... Sometimes I wonder about space travel, you know, going beyond the stars, and if it's possible..." Her voice broke off again, as if this coversation were of no relevence to her. The truth was, she was feeling as if it were unreal, as if she was unreal and this conversation was nothing more than a realistic dream. However, with everything clinging to her body and the night air beating itself in time against her legs, she knew this was no dream, or at least not a dream she had experienced before.

"I always wanted to go up there someday, you know... I mean, don't you ever wonder if there are people or animals out there that don't feel hate or love, someplace like heaven only better?" His blackhair blew around his pale face and she gazed back at him, aprehsive all of a sudden, and straightened up, her back no longer leaning, her back no longer bent.

**_But if heaven where so close to us  
that we were just a mile away.  
Would we really want to touch it's depths?  
And would there truly be another day?_**

"Even if a place like that were so close by, would you really want to go there?" She asked him suddenly, looking more alive than ever, yet somehow more dead, red gem awash with cold moonlight, making her face look more invigorated yet more dead, and everything he had ever felt toward her came forward. He suddenly felt relieved that he was not her: He probably would have lost his control over his emotions then.

"Well, assuming you were free from pain of your daily life, and you didn't have to deal with... Say, a broken heart, or maybe not being able to express anything... Wouldn't you?" Robin asked, looking at her to see why in the world she would say no.

"Think about it, though. You're beyond the stars, you're living forever, with no real sense of direction or... Anything else. I mean, would you want to live like that, with your broken heart still in you? I mean, wouldn't it just be numbed pain? And what if you couldn't leave, and every day was just a downward spiral... Wouldn't you want to get out and try to love?" Raven was shocked: _What the hell am I doing, talking about what I can't feel? _She sighed.

"No, when you put it like that... But, even straight out, if heaven were a mile away, I'm not sure I'd want to leave. But, you guys, my friends... I'd miss you more than anything else this pathetic earth has to offer for me." He stopped, pausing, and then the words burst from his lips anyway. "And you, Raven, more than anyone. You're always giving me more advice, and... Well..." He trailed off, blushing.

"Even if there were one more day left, and heaven were the last safe place, even considering what I told you, would you... Stay with me and the others, or leave?" A very tenitive question, and she was holding her breath, unknown to even her, as she half-spoke, half-whispered it.

"No," he whispered. "No. Never you. If heaven or whatever we're going to call it, is a mile away, I can't leave you behind. After all, you deserve to be there more than anyone else I know." Now his eyes burned behind his mask, and his arm slipped around her shoulder. "Raven... I don't really know what to say..." And so he continued to sit there, his arm laying against her, until he heard the glass shattter with the embaressment from her emotion, shining in front of and behind them.

"I love you..." He choked out, and she was beyond that, still lost in her emotions, shattering windows, yet burning with her true feelings through her eyes: Love. "Please, Raven, my heart is already broken, but please tell me the truth..."

"I... I love you... too..." She fell against him and tried to fight the pain of her emotions down, the true joy mixed in with the pain of having to tuck it away and never be seen again. A peice of her hair fell down onto his hand and he let it lay there. Suddenly, he felt different, more complete, more than with Starfire, more than with anyone before.

_Raven..._

**_But for now I'm wrapped up here beside him.  
Saying words I never thought I knew.  
And the truth is that it doesn't matter what I used to feel.  
Because all that matters is heaven is here with you._**

"I'm never going to leave you. Ever." She said finally, closing herself back up, appering as calm as ever. But both of them knew something was different, something only they could understand, truth flowing between them, justice forgotten for the sake of another. He just nodded, smiled, and tilted her chin up so that his face was level with hers, and thrust his lips toward hers.

She could not, once again, supress her own emotion, and she could feel the tears coming, but forced them away. "It's all going to be okay," he whispered, trying to ignore the loud noise of more shattering glass, like a gunshot. "I promise."

Suddenly they stood up, and she smiled at him quietly. "Do you still want to go to the sky, Robin?"

"No. Even if heaven were a mile from here, I could never go without you." His hand slid into hers again. He could tell this was going to be another long ride of hurt, mystery, and betrayal, but it didn't matter anymore.

He was completed, and, over time, she would be the same.


	14. Crystal Raindrops

_Raventhedarkgoddess: Short Rae/Cy peice, don't ask, it's really random and pretty bad. The poem inbetween is mine, please R+R._

**Crystal Raindrops**

**Let the crystal raindrops fall.  
Let them come around us all.  
From every begining, another defeat.  
The rain comes down in frozen sheet.  
I see you standing, standing alone.  
I know not what to say to convince you to come home.  
So just give me a second to clear my head,  
and just try to forget all the things I said.**

_Let's face it, I'm never going back there again. _Raven Roth stood with her head down and her eyes on the sky, stubborn and dark as ever, the rain falling in forgotten clouds around her body, clinging to her face and hair as if trying to hold her down, to keep her from running away from all the pain of a past one last time. She ignored it, however: No one wanted her, least of all the person she had been closest to, Cyborg.

_**Just let her go, Rob. She thinks she's too good for this team. **I can't believe he would say that to me... _The words resounded over and over in her head and she sighed, that being all that she could think. _I just wanted to take a moment and go away for about a month to try to remember who I was and leave all the stress beind... Andhe wouldn't even let me do that. He claimed he cared so much..._

**_Just prove to me, Rae, that you care. Somehow, some way. Or is control really that important? Do you really need control over even love, even over the people you care about? _**At the time, all she had been able to do was let air out in an angry hiss and tell him, once again, that if she could show love she would have done so already. He had ignored it, though. She couldnt' even remember what the fight had been about: It was all too painful to remember now.

That was when she heard them. Footsteps, heavy footsteps, coming closer and closer to her, splashing through deep puddles and hitting the paved road out of the city into Suburbia behind her, a road no cars dare be on with the recent threats of the river flooding, of people being caught on the bridge she walked on now. She knew who was coming even before she heard his call. "Rae, please listen!"

"Listen to what?" She asked as he neared her. "Listen to you tell me that I think I'm too good for everyone else just because I asked if I could take a break? No thanks, I heard enough of that at the tower." She looked at him standing before her, soaking wet, his hulking metal form dripping. "Or do you have something else to say to me that isn't a clearly intended insult?"

For a second, he could find nothing to say, staring at her form with her black outfit clinging to her, the blue cloak pressed against her due to the sheer force of the blowing water. He watched them roll down her face from near her eyes like tiny, perfect teardrops: And then shook his head. He had to convince her to come home.

It would not be his home, could not be his home, if she wasn't there for him. "Rae... Listen..."

"I am listening. Now, do you have something to say to me or not?" Her blazing purple hair came down toward her eyes and he longed to affectionatly brush it away, but something inside him refused to do so, refused to go back to begging her just to make her come home. _She has to come home because she loves me, or... Or it just won't work._

"... I was really, really nasty to you back there," he managed to start out, but then realized just how nasty he had been, how selfish it was of him in refusing to let her go, in not wanting to let her go for fear of losing her to someone else. It had been a stupid fear, but still he could not make the words come out of his mouth.

"Yes, I suppose you were." She turned away from him, beads of crystal water clinging in her hair. "But surely you didn't come all the way out here just to tell me that?" _Please, don't have come all the way out here just to tell me that._

**Without each other we have no directions.  
Catching sight of both our reflections.  
I see all the pain etched there on your face.  
And knowing I caused it I long to erase.  
But you're moving away from all the strife.  
And somehow I know this is about your whole life.  
So I hold out my hand for you to take.  
Hoping and praying that I don't break.**

"No, no I didn't. I just wanted to know... I just wanted to know why you needed some time off in the first place, why you wanted to leave the team for a while," he babbled, feeling lame, feeling idiotic.

"My emotions were getting out of control from being with you so much, that's all. It's not that I didn't love you, it's just that too much stress makes a girl... like me need a little time away. And then you started yelling and well, it was just better to go than to stay where I wasn't wanted."

"It's not that I don't..." Just then, Cyborg stopped. There they were, their faces reflected in the pool of water. His face was pleading, lonely, that of someone scared and alone who only acted tough when he thought everyone else needed him to be. She stood next to him, alone and slightly... Was Raven upset? Had he been so concerned for himself that he had failed to see her suffering there next to him?

He blinked his human eye and turned to face her, but it was gone: Anything that might have remained on her face was hidden away just under the surface again. "Look, Rae... I'm sorry."

She edged away from him slowly, continuing to walk along the bridge. "You're sorry now that you're losing someone, aren't you? You're sorry now. Well, sometimes you have to consider how sorry you'll be before it's too late." Her voice almost broke over the words but she managed to keep it steady, to keep the way she really was out of her voice so that no pain shown through.

"Raven..." He paused, unsure how to handle the question. "Is there something about you that just won't let you stay here, or do you just not like being attached to someone? What is it, huh? I was mean, and I said I was sorry... You have to stay with us, Raven. You have to."

She moved further away from him. "I can't. I can't stay with you. You're right, I don't like being attached to people. I'm too weak to be attached to people. I always have been. That's why I wanted to go away, I was going to come back when I was ready, and..."

Cyborg reached over and took her hand. "Shh... Raven, it's okay." _Please, let it be okay..._

**And then I see what makes it worthwhile.  
Among the falling raindrops is finally your smile.  
I realize now just how things would lack,  
if I didn't let you use the light to change yourself back.  
And although things made be hard and the road long,  
You're coming home again, back where you belong.  
And as the crystal raindrops fall, in mind they stay.  
Our protection against the storms of other untold days.**

Raven's head had gone to the hollow in his shoulder on instinct alone. Suddenly, she didn't want to be away anymore. She just wanted to be there with them, with people who cared about her. "CanI go now?"

"You're still leaving?" He tried not to sound shocked, incredious, but failed at doing so, his human eye growing larger in his head as he stared at her. "You're still gonna leave us?"

That was when she smiled, the rain still running down her face like tears. "No, Cyborg. Why would I want to leave you? Let's just go home."

He looked over at her and then he smiled too: The smile fixed itself in his memory now, the memory of being together and of happiness. He knew that there would be other hard times, but he could get through them.

He just had to think of the Raven covered in crystal raindrops.


	15. My Immortal

Raventhedarkgoddess: I haven't done Rae/Cy in a while and it's bugging me... This might be crap, but I feel like writing it. Enjoy if at all possible. I do not own TT or My Immortal by Evanesence.

****

My Immortal

I'm so tired of being here.  
Supressed by all my childish fears.  
And if you have to leave,  
I wish that you would just leave.  
Cause your presence still lingers here.  
And it won't leave me alone.  
These wounds won't seem to heal.  
This pain is just too real.  
There's just too much that time cannot erase.

The shadow fell across the ground in a long pattern. Even though there was a human figure there, or at leasta part-human figure, there may as well have been no one. The light struck each object it so gently brushed against, including the tree who's shadow he leaned in,but never him: The light was gone from his life, and so, instead, he moved back, further and further into the darkness the shadows offered to him.

His eyes were fixed on the tiny marble headstone before him, the name emblased and surrounded by the flowers of it's fans, of it's many admirers who had been filing past the tower everyday to the small overlook, the rocky ledge where she was buried, to pay their respects to the fallen hero, as he had heard her called so many times before.

But she was more than a fallen hero to him. She always had been and always would be. He could see the footprints of the onlookers, of the outsiders, around her grave, making a mud path in a continuous straight line where they had been. Until they had left again, that is. They all went away again and left Raven Roth's sad grave overlooking the lake to it's own device.

Just more proof that they had never known her or they, like him, would have stayed away in fear and grief and sorrow. He had not been able to go with Robin and the others to the funeral: Instead he had hid in his room and cried as many tears as only having one eye would permit him to cry. Even after that, though, his heart had been broken and bleeding as an open wound in his chest.

There was no wound, though. Only the battle scar of a broken heart, a heart he knew that he could never get rid of. One shot at love was one shot, and somehow, even as he had lay there in his abstract form of denial, locked away from his love's gravesite, he had just known in his heart that one shot was being buried,made to rest forever.

He knew now that he was alone, but the painful feelings were all under his surface, waiting to come back and haunt him. He didn't even know what he was waiting for, and at once he felt like a foolish child: Did he expect an apparitation, a ghost? Did he expect Raven to pop out of the ground, embrace him, and tell him she wasn't dead, had only been waiting for him, only been sleeping to surprise him?

Even after four months, his colored skin flushed hot with embarressment at what he was doing here, watching a grave in the middle of the night, and he wondered whether he should just go home and forget the whole stupid thing now, forget his feelings. But his feelings kept him there, the devotion of love and of a lingering presence that wouldn't leave him alone.

The presence of wounds that, once in place, had no way of ever healing and would leave him in pain forever. Even after four months, there were still unshed tears and childish hope, hope that he had been clinging to forever now.

Hope that, even as he crouched in the shadows, he would hold onto no matter what.

When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears.  
When you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears.  
And I held your hand through all of these years.  
But you still have all of me.

You used to captivate me by your resonating light.  
But now I'm bound by the life you left behind.  
Your face it haunts my once pleasent dreams.  
Your voice has chased away all of the sanity in me.  
These wounds won't seem to heal.  
This pain is just too real.  
There's just too much that time cannot erase.

He could remember her, her warm scent coming to him and her arms around him, her violet eyes taking him in and whispering that it would all be alright, that he could rest if he wanted to, if he needed to fall against her with no sense of time he was more than welcome to. _I'll protect you, _he had told him time and time again.

And now they were closed, closed forever, unable to tell him anything. The very thought alone was enough to send him rather over the edge, but instead he moved his arms so that he was holding tight to the tree trunk, not letting go, steadying himself. Something within him did not want to let go, was refusing to let go of the only thing that was now keeping him stable.

The same way his heart refused to let go of the only person who had ever shown him any kind of caring, regardless of who he was or what he looked like. Of course, there had been those nights where she hated not him, but herself, and had cried into his shoulder, dodging the plateglass and objects and ignoring how hard it was for her to cry, to let out her feelings with no real regards to her limitations.

She was one of the only people he knew who could truly relate to his limitations, both phyically and emotionly.

He had been her comfort on those nights, those nights when he himself sometimesfelt like breaking down and crying until they were both better, free of the hate and pain of the world. Sometimes she would scream, words of anguish. And then she would always look up to see if he was still there or if he, like everyone else, was afraid, afraid of her and the pain in her life that she had tried to get rid of by confiding in him.

After those outbursts, she would hold his hand and cling to him for hours, although no one else could really see it as 'clinging'. They saw it as her sign of affection, as her way of caring about him.

Now his head swam with thoughts, and he almost expected her to show up and set her arms around his shoulder, expected her eyes to lock with his in a bekconing call of 'come home.' He almost expected her to come for him, but, once again, blushed at the very thought of anyone coming for him, now or ever.

He also blushed at the thought of ever really having a home again when he drove the others away, hiding from their company and instead seaking out the warmth of his room, the protection of his own room. He almost didn't know why he loved to be alone so much, but it helped him to spend time with both his life and the life that had been left behind.

Raven's life almost seemed to go on through him, her songs his songs and her very heart his heart.

He sometimes dreamed about her, her cloak going around and around in circles, her hood hiding all but her eyes, eyes that were filled with anger, mistrust, and hate. "Why did you let me go like that? Why did you let me die?" But, should he open his mouth to speak, she would start to fall away from him, and when he fell silent, she would become even angrier and further verbally insulting. Sometimes he felt as if his very sanity would leave him before the dawn ever broke. All he had wanted was to protect her, to love her and save her...

And then the dawn would break over his face, and he would tell himself what a stupid thing that was to believe, tell himself he was tormenting himself for nothing. But still there would be that hateful voice and the twisted anguished face in his mind, and he could not make it go away, no matter how much he wanted to.

He sighed and took a step forward: One foot in front of the other, nice and easy, just the way he liked it. He had to make it, part of him knew what he needed to do, to make amends with Raven and tell her how sorry she was.

For a second, he almost forgot exactly how crazy he felt. He just needed to let it flow out, to let himself be known by the voices in the dark that would somehow, some way, provide him with all the comfort he needed.

_When you cired I'd wipe away all of your tears.  
When you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears.  
And I've held your hand through all of these years.  
But you still have all of me _

I'e tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone.  
But though you're still with me.  
I've been alone all alone.

When you cried, I'd wipe away all of your tears.  
When you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears.  
And I've held your hand through all of these years.  
But you still have all of me.

But you still have...  
All of me.

"Rae... Rae... I didn't mean this, I didn't mean for any of this to happen. I didn't mean for you to fall like that... When you moved up to protect me, I didn't know you were going to die... If I had known, you'd still be here." His human eye clouded with tears, pain, and emotion, emotion that reminded him of Raven.

He fell down, his body next to her grave, his head laying on the cold, cold marble. Cold as death, he would have assumed, had he not been so wrapped up in his heated confessional. "I miss you so much, and everything in you is still with me..." He looked over at the flowers there, flowers sent to comfort her.

He was the one who truly needed the comfort but chose to brush this away as a thought that he could care less if it existed or fell away, fell into the empty void of unwanted thoughts forever and ever, away from him.

As far away as it could ever get.

He had so much more to say, but it all came falling out with his next three words: "I love you." He stood, pain written over his face, and prepared to leave.

He could still feel her presence in his heart and knew that he would never truly stop missing her, that a part of her was always with him.

His name should have been on a tombstone next to hers. She held all of him, had been buried with all of him.

They were both immortal, immortal in each other. And so, both Victor Stone and Raven Roth, Cyborg and Raven, would live on in the hearts and minds of all those that knew them in both heaven and hell, those who loved and hated them.

Immortal.

(end)


End file.
